Important Update: On Wednesday morning (July 3rd), Boston Police announced that they have made two arrests in the murder of Trina Persad, who was shot on Saturday evening in Goffigan Park at Blue Hill Ave. and Quincy Streets.
Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley said Marquis Nelson, 23, and Joseph Cousin, 17, of Dorchester, identified as the shooter, are in custody and will face murder charges in Trina's death.

By Jim O'Sullivan

Tina Chery didn't need another reminder about why this project is important.

Chery, director of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, which was named for her son after he was shot and killed at age 15, would have walked for peace on Sunday no matter what happened last weekend.

But the shooting death of a Hyde Park man in Dorchester and the Roxbury gunshots that mortally wounded a 10-year-old Dorchester girl on Sunday make this weekend's demonstration all the more salient.

"I'm pissed off right now," said Chery in her office on the fourth floor of 1452 Dorchester Ave., her conversation interrupted every few minutes by phone calls from people seeking news of Trina Persad. "I am frustrated. [Persad] was two-years-old when my son was killed. That was eight years ago ... That is painful.

"That in itself will make a normal person turn to rage."

And rage is just what Chery and others will be trying to vent, peacefully, at Sunday's third annual Parents and Children's Walk for Peace, spearheaded by Isaura Mendes, whose son Bobby Mendes died in 1995 after being stabbed.

"[Persad's death] makes it very sad, even more said than it already is," said Mendes at Tuesday's rally in Goffigan Park, where Persad was shot not far from where, eight years earlier, nine year-old Jermaine Goffigan was also killed. "When my son was killed, I didn't expect all these others to be killed after him.

"Every time we lose somebody in our community, it feels so sad," Mendes said, her voice cracking.

The march, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, starts and ends on Groom St. and, Chery said, is dedicated expressly to the members of the Cape Verdean community who have lost their lives, but is open to all.

At Tuesday's demonstration, Boston clergymembers also called for a citywide day of prayer on Sunday, with residents invited to meet in Goffigan Park at 1:30 as a show of unity against violence.

"We will not stand by and let our streets become stained with the blood of our children," said Paston Steven Thomas, of Roxbury's Asah Church of God and Christ. "Today the city of Boston's spirit of community and unity declare war on the terror that is trying to take over our streets."

Thomas and other clergy compared the international war on terrorism to Boston's own battle against violence, and demanded that anyone with information about Persad's killing step forward.

"Silence is not an option," said Thomas.

"There's a person who pulled the trigger and there's a whole lot of people who know who it was, and we've got to deliver that person," said State Senator Dianne Wilkerson.

Bernadette Fernandes, Persad's mother, also addressed Tuesday's rally. On her right stood her husband, Luis Fernandes, and on her left stood Alvin Keith Persad, her ex-husband and Trina's father.

"When I came to the park to see where my daughter was shot, I didn't see a park," said the mother. "I saw a cemetery."

Alvin Persad flew back from a World Cup vacation in Korea when he heard his daughter had been shot.

"I asked her if she wanted to go and she said, 'No'," Persad said.

The city has seen a rise in violent crime during the past two years, with 66 last year, up from 39 in 2000. Tina Persad's passing at 10:30 p.m. on Monday night marked the 26th homicide this year.

City officials point to a slow economy and the release of previously-imprisoned criminals for the rise in crime.