TAUNTON - No arrests have been made in Greater Taunton’s first homicide of 2009, and authorities are being tight-lipped about any developments in the investigation of the brazen drive-by shooting that claimed the life of a Taunton man Sunday morning on Route 24.
Gregg Miliote, a spokesman for the Bristol County District Attorney’s office, declined to discuss any potential motives in the shooting of 29-year-old Troy Pina.
At approximately 1:45 a.m. Sunday, Pina was gunned down on Route 24 southbound, somewhere in Taunton, Berkley or Freetown. He was sitting in the front passenger seat of a car when another vehicle pulled alongside it and opened fire, killing him, police said.
The other people in the car — two men and a woman — were not injured. Miliote said they called 911 from a stretch of highway near exit 9, but it is unclear exactly where the shooting took place.
“What we want is closure,” Pina’s uncle, Harold Rodriguez, told the Taunton Daily Gazette in a telephone interview. “That’s the most important thing.”
Rodriguez, who helped raise Pina from the time he was 9 years old, doesn’t want the murder to spark more bloodshed.
“We don’t want retaliation,” he said. “We don’t want animalistic-type behavior from people.”
Pina, who was originally from East Providence, was well-known to local law enforcement officials, racking up 16 criminal charges since 2004.
Rodriguez, who admits that his nephew “did a lot of things that were wrong” in the past, insists that he was not the type of man police portrayed him as.
Police say Pina was allegedly involved in dealing drugs, trafficking cocaine, illegal gun possession and an attempted murder in 2004. Police also say Pina had a feud with Nathaniel Moore, an alleged drug dealer who was shot to death in Fairfax Gardens in 2004. The most recent items listed on Pina’s rap sheet are drug dealing charges from November 2006.
“He defended himself most definitely,” Rodriguez said. “You defend yourself when you come up from the streets… My nephew wasn’t perfect, but he wasn’t the way police reports say.”
He characterizes many of the charges as “false accusations.”
“We took care of it in court,” he said.
Pina’s records from Taunton District Court were not available Monday because courthouse staff had to assist Attleboro District Court, which was closed due to a fire.
Despite his legal troubles, Pina’s relatives say he was a devoted family man and loving father of three.
“He helped so many people out when they were at their lowest points, giving them clothes, talking to them and just being their friend,” Rodriguez said. “My nephew had a heart so big that he donated his organs.”
Pina, he said, was a street-smart kid who loved music and clothes.
The uncle said the past few days have been extremely difficult for the family. Relatives were notified of Pina’s death Sunday, then picked out a casket Monday. Today,
Rodriguez has to perform the somber task of going to the state medical examiner’s office in Boston to formally identify his nephew’s body. Funeral arrangements have been set, but are being kept private.
Rodriguez hopes that the response to his nephew’s murder won’t come in the form of more violence.
“This is not the life young kids should be living these days,” he said. “They get a gun in their hand and they think they are God. Whoever did this is a coward. To do something like that is not right.”
There have been no drive-by highway shootings in Bristol County in recent memory, but there was an incident on Route 24 in Randolph last summer. In July 2008, a gunman popped out of the sunroof of a car and fired eight shots at another vehicle, injuring three passengers. The victims, all of whom survived, were returning from the Brockton Fair shortly after midnight.
In the wake of Sunday’s murder, authorities are saying that the incident was not a random act of violence.
“The public shouldn’t be concerned about this being anything like the D.C. sniper,” Miliote said, making reference to a series of random shootings in 2002 in the Washington, D.C., area.
Police are appealing to anyone who may have information about the Pina murder, or who was on or near Route 24 early Sunday morning, to come forward by calling state police at either (508) 993-8373 or (508) 997-0711.
“We’re still looking for the public’s assistance,” Miliote said. “They can be anonymous if they’d like to be.”
gtuoti@tauntongazette.com