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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Davis Square’s Statue Park is cordoned off Tuesday after a stabbing. (Somerville Police Department)

A 31-year-old man was stabbed “multiple” times in his torso at around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday in Somerville’s heavily trafficked Davis Square, near where police carried away a body less than a month ago.

Somerville police got calls Tuesday saying two men were fighting and that one “possibly had a knife,” police said. Upon arrival, officers found the victim with “serious but non-life-threatening injuries [and he is now] recovering in a local hospital,” police said Wednesday morning.

The stabber was not arrested, Somerville Police Capt. Jeff DiGregorio said. The department is dedicated to being transparent with the public, he said, and if police felt the stabber was a threat to others in the community, they would have communicated that to the public. Any members of the public with information about the incident are asked to call the Somerville Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division at (617) 625-1600, ext. 7226.

A police photo from the incident shows Statue Park – named for its life-sized cast concrete artwork “Ten Figures” by James Tyler – cordoned off with police tape. The Davis Square red line T stop is to one side, and there are bus stops on both sides of the plaza, which holds a minimart, ice cream shop and restaurant as well as tables and benches for public use.

It was just May 11 that a body was discovered in the morning on the same plaza, even closer to the ice cream shop and minimart. Members of the public talking on social media were convinced that death was due to a drug overdose, but the discovery of a corpse in such a public place went unremarked upon the entire day by police and city officials. The death went unreported except on the square’s active Facebook group.

The public was left to conjecture that the death was the result of a drug overdose. On Tuesday, people speculated that the fighting men were unhoused, possibly new to Somerville after being forced out of Boston’s “Mass and Cass” encampment of the unhoused and users of drugs. DiGregorio was not able to say whether there had been a recent influx in unhoused people.

“Davis Square is getting mighty dangerous lately,” said a user identified as Angela Babbitt on Twitter.

City and police spokespeople were contacted for comment Wednesday. DiGregorio responded the next day.