On October 2, 2005, in the basement,
near the keg, during an off-campus party thrown by some Wentworth
College students, a young man named Joe mistakenly bumped a kid from
Mission Park and there was a burst of tension, the kind of idiotic
flare-up that happens when beer meets testosterone.
Joe had come from the suburbs to hang
with friends and wasn't going to let something so stupid ruin his
night. He went upstairs with his buddies.
Outside the kitchen a few minutes
later, the guy Joe had bumped reappeared with a posse, at least one
of whom had a bandana covering his face and a baseball hat pulled
down to his eyes. They shoved Joe, threatened him, backed him against
the wall. Then one of them stabbed him seven times in the gut.
The crowd panicked and fled as Joe bled
to death, and his killer disappeared into the chaos.