BOSTON — Massachusetts authorities say a group of Jewish teens played a key role in saving the life of a drowning man with a tattoo of a swastika.
NBC Boston reports it happened Thursday night as the four youths — all students at an Orthodox Jewish high school in suburban Brookline — spotted the body of a man partially submerged in Chestnut Hill Reservoir.
Boston College police officer Carl Mascioli says two of the teens ran to his patrol car to alert him. Mascioli says he rushed down the embankment, pulled the man from the water and noticed the Nazi symbol tattooed on his hand.
He says the unidentified students told him they don’t regret helping the man despite his anti-Semitic tattoo.
Officials say the man is expected to make a full recovery.
BROCKTON — Authorities say they have arrested a man in connection with a fatal shooting in Brockton.
Massachusetts State Police detectives and Brockton police said in a statement Monday that 29-year-old Queito Miranda, of Brockton, was taken into custody Sunday afternoon in Worcester.
Miranda is scheduled to be arraigned on a murder charge Tuesday in Brockton District Court. It was not immediately known whether he had an attorney.
The Plymouth County District Attorney’s office says Miranda is suspected in Friday’s shooting death of 32-year-old Earl Thomas, of New Bedford, who was gunned down in a parking lot. Thomas was taken by ambulance to Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton, where he was pronounced dead.
It was the city’s second homicide of the year.
BOSTON — House Speaker Robert DeLeo is assuring visitors to the Massachusetts Statehouse they’re not being subjected to facial recognition.
In a written statement, the Winthrop Democrat says: “There is no such technology used at the State House.”
The comment was part of a longer statement DeLeo’s office sent out late Thursday in response to students who had gathered at the Statehouse for several days to protest higher education costs.
One of the protesters said he was told by an unnamed official that the Statehouse uses facial recognition to match the faces of people who walk through public entrances with law enforcement databases.
DeLeo denies the use of facial recognition at the Statehouse.
The Statehouse has been ramping up security, recently adding additional security cameras throughout the building.
FALMOUTH — Authorities say an illegal Memorial Day weekend fireworks display is likely to blame for a brush fire that scorched five acres on Cape Cod.
Firefighters in Falmouth, Massachusetts, say the unauthorized display Saturday night appears to have sparked the blaze. No injuries were reported.
Crews responding to the scene near the Beagle Club found three large, separate fires burning in the wooded area around 11 p.m.
The Falmouth department says in a Facebook post that flames at one point came close to a neighborhood.
It says Falmouth police, Massachusetts State Police and the Barnstable County Sheriff’s Office are investigating.
BOSTON — Mayor Marty Walsh says Boston has provided housing to more than 1,000 homeless veterans over the past five years.
Walsh said in a statement Monday the city continues to work on the problem, even though Boston was deemed to have ended chronic homelessness in 2016 among those who served in the armed forces.
He says Boston now has one of the lowest rates of veteran homelessness in the U.S. Officials say most are Vietnam veterans.
Boston’s Commissioner of Veterans Services, Robert Santiago, says the goal is to provide permanent housing — not just temporary shelter — for those who have served in the military.
Andrew McCawley is president and CEO of the New England Center and Home for Veterans. He says what’s most meaningful is restoring veterans’ independence and dignity.
From Associated Press