John Ruch
JACKSON SQ.—Two men—one of them a Jamaica Plain resident—were acquitted of attempted murder and other charges in May in a 2009 incident that left a South Boston man shot in the face inside the Bromley-Heath housing development.
But police responding to that incident captured a third man with a gun who turned out to have nothing to do with the shooting. That man was sent to prison earlier this year.
Prosecutors alleged that Justin L. Searcy, 20, of Mattapan accidentally shot the South Boston man on Jan. 10, 2009 while trying to shoot his own former girlfriend in a case of domestic violence. Theodore Junior Gamble, 24, a Bromley-Heath resident, was accused of giving Searcy a gun.
A jury disagreed with that story and acquitted both men of all charges in the case, according to Jake Wark of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.
In what prosecutors called a “twist,” police officers at the scene of the shooting chased another man with a gun, believing he was involved in the crime. That man, Charles Willie Devoe, 24, of Dorchester, tossed an unlicensed 9mm gun into a Bromley-Heath Dumpster. Devoe had nothing to do with the shooting, but earlier this year was convicted of a firearm violation and is now serving four-and-a-half years in prison, according to the DA’s Office.