December 12, 2011
47-49 Savin Hill Ave: Landlord has told police he will evict tenants who were involved in brawl on Friday.(Updated, Tuesday, Dec. 13)— Five people were arrested on Friday night following a raucous street brawl outside a notorious multi-family house on Savin Hill’s main drag. Now, a top official in the Mayor's office says that the owner of the property has promised to evict the tenants who were arrested in the incident.
As many as 20 people were allegedly fighting outside of 49 Savin Hill Ave. when the first police unit rolled up around 10:45 p.m. on Friday. More than a dozen cops from district C-11 and neighboring district C-6 were needed to quell the violence and cuff the worst offenders, one of whom fled inside the six-family house that neighbors have repeatedly cited as a trouble-spot.
One of those residents, Nadeo Mason, 19, faces additional charges after he allegedly punched one of the arresting officers before running inside the house. Mason and a second man — Robert Allison, 26— were arrested inside the house following a “violent struggle” with officers. Demetrius Allison, 24, was also arrested outside the front entrance to the building.
Abimael Sanchez, 20, and Jean Richard Phillipe, 19, were each arrested on the street after police say they observed the pair throwing punches at one another. All five were transported to District C-11 “where the verbal altercation continued”, according to the police report.
The property at 47-49 Savin Hill Ave. became the focus of neighborhood scrutiny following the May 7 murder of 19 year-old Derek Matulina, a Savin Hill native who was shot to death at the nearby Savin Hill T station, allegedly by Nhu Ahn Nguyen, who has since been charged with the killing. (Nguyen’s trial is scheduled for July 2012, according to the office of Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley.)
While the property evidently had no direct link to the murder, it immediately drew the focus of police investigators in the hours after Matulina’s shooting. Neighbors who packed a community meeting in the days following the murder highlighted the multi-family house as a chronic trouble-spot.
City officials later created a task force to crack down on so-called “problem properties” — which they defined as an address where police have been called to more than four times in a 12 month period.
A check of police records by Reporter staff show that there have been at least four prior calls to the dual address in the last year, including a pair of Assault and Battery calls and a drug arrest in July.
The owner of the property is My Van Nguyen, who lists a mailing address in Weston, Massachusetts. City records show that Van also owns properties at 114 Sawyer Ave. and 43 Neponset Ave. in Dorchester and 31 Leston St. in Mattapan.
The Reporter called Nguyen to seek comment for this article. But the woman who answered the phone at the number listed for his company claimed he was not available.
Jay Walsh, the director of the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services, told the Reporter on Tuesday that Nguyen has told Boston Police that he intends to begin eviction proceedings immediately to “rid himself and the neighborhood” of the tenants in apartment #1 who were involved in Friday’s incident.
Walsh said that while the latest incident may have prompted the property to be added to the “problem” list, Nguyen would not likely be fined because he is working cooperatively with them right now to address the problem.
“Proactively, the BPD had met with the landlord and other officials back in June and at that meeting [Nguyen] agreed to be more cooperative,” Walsh said. In the aftermath of Friday’s brawl “that got everyone’s attention,” Walsh says that Nguyen has told Boston Police that he plans to evict the tenants in unit 1 of #49.
Walsh also says that officers from the city's code enforcement and inspectional services divisions will conduct a thorough inspection of the property on Wednesday in cooperation with Nguyen.
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