Memorial Drive shooting victim has long road to recovery, sister says: "He's in so much pain"

Outside of Massachusetts General Hospital, the sister of a man seriously wounded in Monday's shooting rampage on Memorial Drive in Cambridge is speaking out.

Thirty-five-year-old Casmir Bangoura was shot several times in the shoulder and leg as he attempted to run away from a shooter with an AR-style rifle, who police identified as Tyler Brown.

Bangoura, who lives in the apartment building at 808 Memorial Drive with his sister and her kids, was moving his car to go run an errand for his sister when the shots first rang out. He tried to run, his sister told WBZ, but he was shot.

"It was just so unfortunate that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time that he has to endure this pain, these bullets on him," Sia Lelano said. "My brother is a nice human being that you always want to be around, and he has no problems."

Lelano said her brother called 911 as he was bleeding from the shots. "He's in so much pain," she said. "But the good thing is that he's alive and he's going to recover. It's going to be a long road to recovery for him."

Lelano has spent every day at his bedside at Mass. General as he painfully recovers. He's already endured several surgeries, including one for eight hours on Monday, and he has more surgeries to go. It's unclear if or when he'll walk again. "I don't know," Lelano said. "I don't know that. But I hope that it will happen. It will be a long recovery, a long road to recovery, but it will happen."

Lelano says her brother is very quiet and shy and would never cause trouble. She's "devastated," she says, that he was in the shooter's orbit on Monday, when prosecutors say Tyler Brown fired more than 70 rounds of ammunition at a random crowd of cars and pedestrians.

Bangoura is "traumatized right now because anytime that he's trying to fall asleep he reflects… that image of [the shooter] coming," Lelano explained.

Lelano is also disappointed that Tyler Brown was on the streets to begin with. The 46-year-old Boston man has a criminal history dating back 32 years, and was given a five year prison sentence after shooting at Boston Police in 2020. 

"What is making me so upset is that the guy was not supposed to be out. The guy is a criminal," Lelano said. If Brown had been in prison for 12 years, like prosecutors had requested back at his sentencing in 2021, "my brother wouldn't be shot today," she said.