On the evening of what should have been a celebration, Alex Allen, a 55-year-old Black/African American male, was resting on the couch in his Mattapan home on August 11, 2018. It was his birthday, but the day would end in tragedy. An intruder kicked in the door to his Manchester Street residence and opened fire, striking Allen multiple times. His wife, Dola, was upstairs when she heard the series of gunshots that echoed through their house.
When she came down, she discovered her husband grievously wounded. Allen, a longtime supervisor for the Boston Public Works Department, was rushed to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.
The brazen home invasion was not the first time Allen had been a target of violence. Just eight months earlier, in December 2017, he had been shot in the leg while driving a city vehicle. Prior to that incident, shots had also been fired at the family’s home, leading police to believe he was intentionally targeted. In the wake of his murder, his wife described him as her hero, a big-hearted man who had once given her a kidney. She believed the fatal attack was well-planned, noting that the surveillance cameras outside their home had been stolen by the killer.
The death of Alex Allen marked the 33rd homicide in the city of Boston that year. Despite pleas from his family for justice and public calls for information from the Boston Police Department, the investigation has not yielded any arrests. No suspects have been publicly identified in connection with the murder. The case remains unsolved, leaving a family to mourn and a community without answers as to who committed the heartless act and why.
