Family and friends gathered in Boston Thursday evening to remember their loved ones, lost to senseless violence as part of the 10th anniversary of the Garden of Peace, a memorial to honor homicide victims.
For Don and Sandy Shapiro, decades later, the pain is still raw. Back in the blizzard of '78, Sandy's father, Max Fishman, an auxiliary Randolph, Massachusetts, policeman, was shot in the head while delivering oil to stranded customers in Roxbury.
"It's hard to believe 36 years later, it still affects you, but now I'm a grandfather, and I know what he's lost," Don Shapiro, Fishman's son-in-law, said.
One of the killers is spending life behind bars without parole; the other, Gerald Hill, was just 15 at the time. To this day, Don and Sandy say they're still fighting to keep him behind bars when he goes up for parole.
Back in 2003, Joan Henderson lost her brother, Charles Johnson, when a gunman shot up the Dudley Square Bus stop in Roxbury.
"He was standing there talking to some friends and the guy went through the station shooting and shot five people, but my brother was the one who got killed," said Henderson.
Henderson tragically also lost her husband, Errol Crawford, years before. He was shot in the back of the head in 1985. For their daughter, who now has children of her own, it's a loss that she thinks of daily.
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"His grand kids never got to know him, so definitely he was a major, major part in our world," Nikki Solomon said.
While the organizers of the event, some victims themselves, say no one wants to join this group, they say there is comfort in knowing they aren't alone. They are there for each other.
More than 900 homicide victims are honored in the memorial.
