Teen Killed In Boston, Long Peace Ends

For nearly 2-1/2 years, Boston beat the odds: not one juvenile slain. President Clinton held the city up as a model for the nation.

But everyone knew it couldn’t last forever.

On Thursday, 16-year-old Eric Paulding was fatally shot outside his girlfriend’s house in what police said appeared to be an argument between two groups of teens.

“In my heart I had been wishing this day would never come, but in my head I knew it would,” Mayor Thomas Menino said. “It’s one incident, and one incident is too many.”

Before Paulding’s death, the last time someone under 17 was killed in Boston was on July 10, 1995, when 16-year-old Cassius P. Love was shot with a rifle during an argument over a bicycle.