by Bill Forry
(Update: Dec. 30, 2011)
A teenager has been indicted for allegedly killing Ciaran Conneely, a 36 year-old Galway man who was shot to death outside his Dorchester apartment building on Oct. 10. John Graham, 17, will be charged with first degree murder in Conneely’s murder, which rocked the Adams Corner neighborhood last fall.

The indictment also charged Graham with two counts of armed assault with intent to rob in an Oct. 30 incident on Monsignor Lydon Way in Dorchester in which Graham is alleged to have shot two men during an attempted robbery.
Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley’s office said that Graham was arrested on Nov. 6 for the Lydon Way incident and is now being held on $100,000 cash bail in that case. Graham has not been “formally arrested for Conneely’s slaying, but a warrant has been entered and he will remain in custody until he is arraigned in Suffolk Superior Court,” Conley’s office said in a statement.
Conneely, known by the nickname “Kiwi” to his friends and neighbors, had lived in Dorchester for the last 12 years and worked in construction. A neighbor found him suffering from a single gunshot wound to the chest and lying along the curb outside 20 Nahant Ave., just steps from his apartment at about 1 a.m. on Oct, 10. He was taken to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries and died later in the morning, according to the Police Department.
State Rep. Martin Walsh, whose parents emigrated from Ireland’s County Galway in the 1960s, said he hopes the indictment “will bring some comfort to the Conneely family. I’m very grateful to the Boston Police for their persistence in this case. It’s just senseless,” Walsh said of the crime. “It’s a sad situation when you have a 17 year old, who should be in high school looking forward to his life. Now his life is over, too.”
Jake Wark, a spokesman for DA Conley, said that Graham was 16 years old at the time of the Conneely murder last October. But juveniles charged with murder are automatically tried as adults under Massachusetts law. The same Grand Jury indicted Graham with shooting two men on Monsignor Lydon Way on the night of Sunday, Oct. 30. A police report obtained by the Reporter indicates that Graham was trying to rob the two men as they walked home from a Dorchester Avenue convenience store around 10 o’clock that night.
According to the police report, one of the victims— an 18-year-old Asian male — was shot repeatedly in the front and rear torso outside of 32 Lydon Way. The other victim, age 20, was shot in the right arm. Both men survived the attack.
One of the victims told police that the suspect — described as a black male in a mustard-colored hoodie— was seated on the stairs of a building on Lydon Way. The assailant asked them for a cigarette and when the victims said, no, he approached them with a .22 caliber revolver demanding, “Give me everything you got.” When the victims refused, he opened fire and then ran toward Dorchester Avenue.

Developing story