Thursday, April 18, 2024

There will be good news to discuss Wednesday at a meeting about a spate of gun incidents in The Port and Wellington-Harrington neighborhoods: Police arrested a suspect Thursday in a Sunday shooting incident.

Jean Griffin, 41, of Fields Corner in Dorchester, was arrested – and expected to be arraigned Friday in Cambridge District Court – on charges including armed assault to murder, possession of a large-capacity firearm, carrying a loaded firearm without a license and malicious destruction of property.

Police responded to calls for possible gunshots at around 3:20 a.m. Sunday at Elm and Cambridge streets in the Wellington-Harrington neighborhood near Inman Square and found evidence that at least two shots were fired into the second-story bedroom of an Elm Street home, said Jeremy Warnick, director of communications and media relations for Cambridge police.

“It is believed that the suspect was targeting a male in the home” with a rifle, Warnick said.

Griffin, who is “known to the department,” was spotted in video surveillance of the incident obtained by police, leading officers with the Cambridge and Boston police departments and U.S. Marshals in Dorchester to find and arrest him Thursday, Warnick said.

“Our officers have aggressively been working this case and were determined to identify and locate the suspect responsible for it. Due to their thorough investigation, cooperation from residents and support from our local law enforcement partners, we were able to quickly resolve this case,” Police Commissioner Branville G. Bard Jr. said.

But the Elm Street shooting was the fifth such incident – reports of early morning gunshots with no known victims – since March 31, though the earlier shootings within the 50-day stretch were all in The Port neighborhood closer to Central Square.

The number of incidents led to the calling of a community discussion from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Pisani Center, 131 Washington St., in The Port with Bard, Mayor Marc McGovern and City Manager Louis A. DePasquale planning to be on hand to answer citizens’ questions about the city’s response to the shootings and its strategies for reducing gun violence.