http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=190879

By Laurel J. Sweet and Michele McPheeMonday, March 26, 2007 - Updated: 12:46 AM EST

As subpoenas are served to tight-lipped partygoers who were with a small-town Kentucky woman shot to death early Saturday morning, detectives are scouring security video from the Theater District, where Chiara Maria Levin met the men who would drive her to the deadly Dorchester bash.

“It makes you sick,” Mayor Thomas M. Menino said yesterday. “It’s just outrageous. And what’s most outrageous is that people aren’t coming forward with information. If they really care about this young woman they should tell us what they know.”

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis declined to say how many grand jury subpoenas were being issued to pressure witnesses to cooperate, but said, “This case is an around-the-clock investigation.”

After attending a great-aunt’s birthday party in Boston Friday, Levin, 22, who grew up in Danville, Ky., but recently moved to Manhattan to work in public relations for Meltin’ Pot Jeans, went to the Caprice Lounge on Tremont Street. At 2 a.m., Levin left with two female friends and climbed into a car with an unknown number of men to head to what sources called a “Cape Verdean after-hours party” at 415 Geneva Ave.

The ride took the women into one of Boston’s worst “hotspots” for bloodshed and shootings - an area where Davis recently beefed up foot patrols and heightened the Youth Violence Strike Force presence in an effort to get crime under control. It is unclear whether the women knew they were headed into a high-crime area. Menino attributed the tragedy to a perfect storm of “young people not knowing when to call it a night” and killers with “a total disregard for human life.”

Investigators do not believe Levin, a University of Michigan graduate, was the intended target of the gunplay. She was shot in the head while sitting in a car outside the triple-decker.

Menino is questioning why neighbors reported shots fired at 3:20 a.m., but Levin wasn’t brought to BMC - only 11 minutes away - until just before 4 a.m.

“It’s crazy,” Menino said. Police say Levin may have been moved into another car. Later, Jason Barbosa, 18, a reputed Cape Verdean gang member according to police, admitted himself to Boston Medical Center with a gunshot wound to his shoulder. Police are looking into whether it is related.

Levin’s father, William Levin, 58, an art history professor at Centre College in Danville, lived in Newton Center in the early 1990s. The slain girl’s mother, Maria Grazia Levin, is a licensed social worker.

“You could say this place was just too little for her,” one heartbroken Danville woman said yesterday. In a whistle-stop where folks don’t lock their doors, “This is the most senseless thing I’ve ever heard of in my life,” said Gail Griffin, whose daughter grew up with Levin, Danville High’s 2002 valedictorian.

Danville Mayor Hugh Coomer, 71, presiding over fewer than 16,000 residents, said,“It’s hard to understand. Something like this is shocking, but of course kids in small towns leave to seek their fortunes elsewhere.”