“He was a good dude, just been married last year, just had a baby. He did a lot of time in prison but he was a good dude, he came home and turned his life around,” Shawn Washington said of his “best friend,” Angelo West, who was shot and killed by police on Humboldt Avenue Friday night. “I never, ever woke up crying — I woke up crying this morning.”
As members of the Boston Police Department’s Youth Violence Strike Force approached the vehicle that West was riding in at 6:40 p.m. near the intersection of Humboldt Avenue and Ruthven Street, West “exited the car and opened fire on the officer,” police said.
Officer John T. Moynihan, 34, suffered a gunshot wound to the face and was rushed to Boston Medical Center, where he remains in critical condition. West, who suffered multiple gunshot wounds, was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. A third, female victim, who police believe was caught in the crossfire, suffered a non-life-threatening gunshot wound and was transported to Boston Medical Center.
This was not the first time West had fired at police officers — he was sentenced to 7 to 10 years in prison after a July 2001 shooting.
West was arrested after firing a .22-caliber pistol at a pair of cops in the Theatre District, one of whom was now-retired officer Bill Griffiths, 59, who was on routine bicycle patrol about 2:55 a.m. when he saw a state trooper grappling with West on Stuart Street. Griffiths said West begged him to shoot him.
“What I have to live with right now is to say, ‘Maybe if I had done just a little bit more that night then this wouldn’t have happened to this poor man,’ ” Griffiths, whose brother, Sherman, died in a Dorchester drug bust in 1988, told the Herald yesterday. “My family went through that with my brother — in the aftermath it’s always people saying ‘he’s a nice guy, he had a baby.’ His intent was to hurt policemen.