Desperate 911 calls for help couldn’t save slain South Boston doctors
The mother and godmother of one of two prominent doctors who were held captive and killed in their South Boston penthouse in 2017 wept Tuesday as a prosecutor played a 911 recording of a call that was made by one of them in their final moments.
“Hello, do you have an emergency?” an operator repeatedly asked the caller on May 5, 2017. “Hello, can I help you?”
On the third day of testimony in the double-murder trial of Bampumim Teixeira, Dr. Lina Bolanos’s mother, Ana, and godmother, Amanda Gibbs, sobbed as a muffled sound could be heard in the background, but the operator never received a clear response.
In the end, it was a 911 call from a friend of the couple, Fabiana Fagundes, that prompted police to go to the Macallen Building on Dorchester Avenue after her boyfriend received a series of halting text messages from Bolanos’s fiance, Dr. Richard Field.
“Call 111,” read the first — an apparent reference to 911 — then “Gun man,” then “in house.” Five more texts followed, ending with a single word: “Serious.”
Boston Police Officer Scott MacIsaac testified that he and his partner got to the building at about 8:40 p.m., followed by four other officers.
With their guns drawn, they took the elevator to the 11th floor, where they found packages and a set of keys a few feet from the penthouse’s front door.
“I pointed out that the packages were not in an orderly fashion, and this may be evidence there was a struggle,” MacIsaac said.
The officers knocked on the door and identified themselves as Boston Police several times, he said, and when they got no response, he used a key from the concierge to open the penthouse door.
“We saw a silhouette step out from the opposite end of the corridor,” MacIsaac said. “We yelled at the person to come forward and get down on the ground.
“It appeared to us that he was holding a firearm … because of the way he was holding it,” he added, demonstrating with his arms outstretched, hands together.
When Teixeira turned toward him, MacIsaac opened fire “three or four times,” he said.
Officer Sean Wallace testified that when he went to help handcuff Teixeira, “he said, ‘There’s dead bodies. You guys are going to die. They killed my wife.’ And I heard the word ‘sniper.’ ”
Teixeira’s attorney, Steven Sack, noted that a gun was never found.
The building’s concierge, Tawfiq Tongo, testified that the 11th floor could only be reached by using a key fob in the elevator.
Sack asked Tongo whether someone also could reach that floor by walking up the stairs.
“Yes,” the concierge said, “but it’s not going to be an easy walk.”
Today, jurors will be taken to the Macallen Building, where Bolanos and Field were found stabbed to death.
Field, a 49-year-old British national, worked at North Shore Pain Management in Beverly. A native of Colombia, Bolanos, 38, worked at Massachusetts Eye and Ear. The two planned to marry in 2018.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/37ASyU1
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