Cops: Street Minister Recruited Teen to Deal Drugs -- Then Shot Him "Execution Style"

By Bob McGovern, Richard Weir and Antonio Planas
Boston Herald
March 6, 2015

http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2015/03/cops_street_minister_recruited_teen_to_deal_drugs_then_shot_him

John Wilcox

A crusading minister and public school dean, who for years challenged the city’s crime-ridden neighborhoods to take back their streets, fell from grace and into the thug life, recruiting a student as a drug dealer, then shooting him after promising him a night of drugs and women, prosecutors say.

The Rev. Shaun O. Harrison, 55, of Roxbury — known as “Rev” to his students — borrowed the unidentified victim’s cellphone to make a call while walking on Magazine Street on Tuesday night and then tried to kill him “execution style,” wounding him with a shot that grazed the back of his head and lodged in his jaw, according to prosecutors.

“He had told the victim that they were going to a house to get marijuana and meet up with some girls,” Assistant District Attorney David Bradley said. “There was no one else on the street and he was shot in the back of the head. Then Mr. Harrison fled the scene.”

Harrison was arrested after he turned himself in for questioning. He was ordered held on $250,000 bail on a charge of assault with intent to kill.

The student told police he had been selling marijuana for Harrison — his “mentor” — for several months.

Bradley said Harrison had a mural of Latin King gang members in his home and shared a matching tattoo with two other men who were arrested after leaving his house, and arraigned in court beside him on gun and drug possession charges.

“Wow,” said City Councilor Charles Yancey. “I’d seen him a few times at rallies, ironically anti-violence rallies. I saw him at a vigil on Bowdoin and Topliff streets where some kids had got shot. We were trying to win public support in finding out where the guns came from that were used in these homicides.”

The Rev. Miniard Culpepper, pastor of the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Dorchester, said he was devastated by the news.

“I know Shaun pretty good. Shaun was committed to helping young folks change their lives. You know, from what I know about Shaun, I can’t see that happening. I can’t get to the other side of it because all I saw Shaun doing was helping young folks change their lives,” Culpepper said.

The pastor said Harrison volunteered on several anti-violence initiatives his church founded for teens, first with a program in 2007 called HYPE — Humble Youth Peace Experience — and another effort four years later called the Trotter Park Peace Program.

Harrison held four different jobs in five years with the Boston Public Schools, starting in September 2010 as:

• A teacher’s aide at the now defunct Odyssey High School in South Boston for a year;

• A “community field coordinator” at the Boston Green Academy for three years; and

• An aide at Orchard Gardens K-8 Pilot School in Roxbury until he left in January to become a coordinator — formally called the “dean of academy” — at English High School.

Harrison was fired by the Boston Public Schools yesterday. Records indicated he made nearly $50,000 in 2013 but a school spokeswoman said this year his salary would have been $35,000.

Harrison’s neighbors on Pompeii Street in Roxbury — many of them white-collar professionals who asked not to be identified citing fear of retribution — described young men going in and out of the preacher’s apartment at all hours and the pungent smell of marijuana.

“We never had a problem with him, but it was who he was bringing in. They were young kids coming in at all times, at 2 in the morning. ... It was worse on the weekend,” said a 61-year-old woman who said she knew Harrison was a well-known minister.

Dante Lara, Wilson Peguero and Oscar Pena were arrested after authorities saw them leaving Harrison’s home on Wednesday. Pena and Lara were carrying guns without a license, and Peguero had marijuana. Bradley indicated that they may have been helping Harrison get rid of evidence, but those charges have not yet been filed.