Villa Victoria Residents: Gang Violence Needs to End

For mothers with children living in Villa Victoria, Saturday’s violent is yet another painful side effect of the ongoing gang feud with Mission Hill, a conflict some say has put their families at risk for more than 30 years.

Although District Attorney Daniel Conley said Sierra was not involved in gangs, investigators have pinned the motive for his shooting on his address in Villa Victoria. The main suspect in his death, , was a member of the Mission Hill gang, which has a long-standing rivalry with its Villa Victoria counterpart, residents said.

“They have been at war since I was 18,” said one Villa Victoria parent who asked that her name be withheld for fear of retaliation. “I doubt that it’s going to stop anytime soon.”

Mission Hill gang members have made it a habit in recent years to drive through the Villa Victoria community on bikes and in cars, she added, making many parents feel unsafe. Some mothers are preparing to approach the city to ask for help stepping up security in the close-knit Puerto Rican community.

“We’re tired of this violence, we want to end this,” she said. “All our teenagers around here want is respect and to be left alone. They don’t want these guys coming in here drinking and smoking and throwing up gang signs.” 

The woman, who has raised a family in Villa Victoria, added that prosecutors , as a member of the Mission Hill gang and a friend of Arias’, when in fact he was raised in Villa Victoria and was associated with a gang there.

“If anything they were enemies,” she said of Maysonet and Arias.

She said she wanted the correction made public to protect those who were close to Maysonet. The 19-year-old is currently banned from entering the Villa Victoria community and is on GPS monitoring system following his arraignment on Wednesday. 

Meanwhile, the South End continues to mourn the loss of Sierra, who graduated from high school last year and was taking college classes.

“We just want the defenseless killing to end," one woman said. "They took a great man, someone who was doing something with his life.”

Residents want the city to repair security cameras in the neighborhood and help trim branches to increase visibility. Some pointed to the presence of a police station near the Cathedral Housing Project as a huge help in increasing security in that neighborhood.

"The security here is mind boggling," the woman said. "I don’t want to lose a son or daughter just because they walked to the store."