JURY HEARS FROM SLAY VICTIM’S MOTHER May 20, 2008 It was just one gunshot, she said, but it sounded so close and unnerved her so badly that she called her son on his cell phone even though he was still in the house. When the young man didn’t answer, she made her way to the basement where he had been socializing with his friends. That was when Darnella Phillips learned that her son, Edwin “E.J.” Duncan, and three of his friends – Jason Bachiller, Jihad Chankhour, and Chris Vieira – had been shot to death in the basement of her Dorchester home. Phillips, a retired MBTA operator now living in Georgia, told a Suffolk Superior Court jury today that she was folding laundry in her bedroom at 43 Bourneside Street when she heard a loud noise from the right side of the house sometime after 9:00 p.m. “I panicked,” she said. “I asked my husband, ‘was that a gunshot or a firecracker?” He said, ‘that’s a gunshot.’” Phillips looked out her window and saw a lone male approaching a car that belonged to one of Duncan’s friends. “He turned around and faced the house,” she said. “He was fiddling with some keys. This person unlocked the car and leaned in, then pushed back out.” Not recognizing the man she saw and disturbed by the apparent proximity of the sound she heard, Phillips reached for her phone. “I got my cell and tried to find a light so I could call my son’s cell and I didn’t get an answer.” Asked by First Assistant District Attorney Josh Wall what she did next, Phillips hesitated before answering. “I went down to the basement,” she said, her voice cracking, “and that’s when I saw my son and Jason lying in front of the stairs. Jason’s body was completely riddled with bullets. My son was lying there lifeless.” Phillips raced back upstairs and called 911, initiating an investigation that would continue for five months before Boston Police homicide detectives and Suffolk County prosecutors assembled sufficient evidence to charge CALVIN CARNES, Jr. (D.O.B. 8/8/86), of Dorchester with the murders of her son and his three friends in one of the most notorious crimes in Boston’s history. Phillips recalled Duncan as “a very smart, humorous” young man who developed “some very serious religious beliefs” as a child and was skilled in a variety of artistic pursuits that included writing, drawing, and music. It was in this latter field that he had committed himself prior to his murder. “He wanted to be famous,” she said. “He would come home from work and go straight to the basement,” where he and his friends had set up a mixing studio for their fledgling rap group, Graveside. Phillips told jurors that she had three other grown children – two daughters and a son whose high fever as an infant left him developmentally disabled. That son was very close to Duncan. “His teacher took him to E.J.’s funeral and afterwards he cried and cried and cried. He seldom cried about anything,” she said. “It was because he knew E.J. was gone,” she said. Carnes is represented by attorney Shannon Frison. Testimony is ongoing, with the trial expected to last about six weeks. Return to the Press Releases page.