Suspect charged with murder after shooting
Male victim shot on Windsor Street was found dead near Kendall MBTA
On Monday, Roosselin Altidor of Medford was arraigned on a charge of murder for the Aug. 12 shooting of 31-year-old Rasaun Nichols near MIT’s campus.
Nichols was shot through the windshield of his girlfriend’s car while they were parked near 119 Windsor Street in Cambridge. Nichols’s girlfriend tried to rush him to the hospital but stopped for help near the Kendall MBTA stop. When the police arrived, Nichols did not have a pulse and was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
Photographs of the scene showed what appeared to be at least six bullet holes in the passenger side of the victim’s windshield.
MIT Alert issued a series of warnings to campus during the incident. It was originally thought, according to the first Alert, that the victim had been shot near the MBTA station. Later updates clarified that the victim had been shot about a half-mile from there and that the driver of the vehicle had driven the car to the Kendall MBTA stop.
As of 10:10 p.m. — more than an hour after the first MIT Alert was issued at 8:59 p.m. — community members were being warned that the “suspect is still at large.”
By 10:50 p.m., it was relayed through a follow-up Alert that “MIT Police do not believe there is any threat to the MIT community.”
Early in the morning on Aug. 13, MIT Executive Vice President and Treasurer Israel Ruiz SM ’01 sent an email to the MIT community with the details of the incident, also stating that “while the MIT Police have informed me that there is no known danger to the MIT community, they caution us all to be especially alert.”
Several mailing lists, including ec-discuss and the Media Lab’s official list, saw posts warning people to stay safe. A post on the latter list instructed people to “turn off the light and keep ... doors locked.” Another thread invited those in the building to gather together to ride out the situation.