Tragedy Revisits Boston Family

On the fourth anniversary of her brother's slaying, a woman lighting candles at a makeshift shrine to him was gunned down, killed at about the same spot, on the same day and at nearly the same hour as her older sibling.

Police said they don't know who shot her or why.

The woman was killed Saturday at about 11:30 p.m. in the city's Roxbury neighborhood on a one-way street close to a mass transit station and within view of Boston police headquarters.

Police declined to give her identity, but friends and a relative identified her as Analicia Perry, 20, of the South End neighborhood. She had a 4-year-old daughter and had lived with her mother and sister about a mile from where her brother was killed.

Her brother, Robert Perry, was 26 when he was shot several times on July 22, 2002, on the sidewalk next to his apartment complex. Police identified a man they said was the shooter, but he was never arrested and later was himself found shot to death.

"It's crazy," their sister, Chyneatha Perry, told the Boston Herald for Monday's editions. "Everyone thinks it's a dream that we're going to wake up from. How does this happen? The same day. The same place. Four years ago."

On Saturday night, Chyneatha Perry said the sisters marked the anniversary of their brother's death as they have each year, leaving pictures of him at the scene and lighting candles.

"It was a windy day and she'd driven by there and seen the candles had gone out," said Chyneatha Perry. "She went to my sister's house and dropped off her daughter, then went down there. ... She was kneeling and lighting a candle when it happened."

On Sunday, dozens of people visited the shooting scene, where a cardboard sign with the words "Rest in Peace" lay against a fence. Friends recalled Analicia Perry as a good friend.

"She was always there for advice," said Chrissy Williams. "She was the first one of all of us to have a baby, so I always called her."

Friends said she was a talented hair stylist who had hoped to go to Quincy College in the fall to study nursing.