“Two young people have lost their lives on Saturday night, and our hearts go out to their families,” Cruz said. “This is a senseless loss of life, and one death via gun violence is too many.”
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State Police and Brockton police detectives have conducted dozens of interviews, reviewed surveillance footage and canvassed the scene in an “around-the-clock” investigation that is still ongoing, Cruz said. Those efforts yielded evidence pointing to Leonard, who fled on foot and has not been seen since, Cruz said.
Investigators believe Leonard may have changed his appearance and cut his hair as police continue to search for him, Cruz said.
Brockton typically has among the highest homicide rates per capita in the state, but the city’s overall violent crime rate remained level from 2019 through 2023, according to state’s crime data dashboard. Homicides jumped from four in 2020 to eight in 2021 and have remained elevated since. But Cruz said violence declined last year and that he is hopeful that trend would continue, but acknowledged Saturday’s double homicide threatens to undermine that progress.
“One event can really turn everybody’s head the wrong way, and it’s unfortunate for the city,” Cruz said. “I think that the city will get tarnished because of this terrible event that night, and it’s really a great city with a lot of opportunity there.”
Phyllis Ellis, president of the Brockton Area Branch NAACP, said the killing of Albertson and Alvarez was “devastating.”
“I can’t imagine what the parents are going through,” Ellis said.
She also voiced concern that the shooting could perpetuate stereotypes of Brockton, saying the city has made strides in reducing violence in recent years.
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“Is there violence here? Yes. But I think it has gone down quite a bit,” Ellis said “I don’t know how we can overcome this perception of Brockton being the most violent city.”
Cruz asked anyone with information on Leonard’s whereabouts to contact the Massachusetts State Police Fusion Center at 1-800-KAPTURE.
“Leonard is considered to be possibly armed and dangerous,” Cruz said. “No one should approach him.”
Brockton Public Schools said in a statement that they are “deeply saddened” by the loss of Albertson, who was a student at Champion High School.
“We are deeply saddened by the loss of a Champion High School student following an incident of violence in our community yesterday,” the statement said. ”We are working to support their family however we can and will be making resources available to students and staff grieving this loss.”
Police and school officials do not believe there is any ongoing threat to student safety, the district’s communications director Jordan Mayblum told the Globe.
Champion High School has just 163 students and runs a program designed for students who “thrive in a smaller academic setting,” according to the school’s website. It is a sharp contrast to the 3,600-student Brockton High School, which is the state’s largest and has experienced a crisis of understaffing, disorder and fights between students.
Those concerns prompted four members of Brockton’s School Committee, including Vice Chair Tony Rodrigues, to call on Governor Maura Healey to deploy National Guard troops to Brockton High School — a radical proposal that drew strong pushback from education specialists, racial justice advocates, and other Brockton officials.
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Rodrigues described the shooting as “truly heartbreaking” in an email to the Globe Monday. He wrote that the School Committee had recently approved a $99,000 Gun Violence Prevention Grant from the Office of Attorney General Andrea Campbell that would bring anti-violence programming to the district’s middle and high schoolers.
“While this initiative is a necessary step in the right direction, it is not enough,” Rodrigues wrote. “Gun violence prevention cannot be addressed solely through school-based programs; it requires a broader, more comprehensive community approach.”
An online fundraiser for Alvarez’s family described her as “a light in all of so many lives — full of life, laughter, and kindness."
On Sunday afternoon, no sign of the shooting remained at the parking lot between Starbucks and Chipotle where the two victims were fatally shot. An employee at the Starbucks said police investigating the shooting had obtained footage from the store’s security cameras.
The Westgate Mall has a 24/7 security presence on its property and a full complement of security staff were working at the time of the shooting, the mall’s property manager Tom Bowen said in a statement.
“Westgate Mall extends our sincere condolences to the families of the two teens who were the victims of the tragic shooting,” Bowen said. “We are working closely with both the state and Brockton Police on the investigation.”
Last summer, a 21-year-old man was injured in a shooting outside the same mall on the night of the Fourth of July.
When reached by phone Sunday evening, a manager at the Chipotle said that no employee was authorized to make any comments.
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Robert Sullivan, the mayor of Brockton, told reporters at the scene Sunday afternoon that the violence on Saturday night was “unacceptable.”
“Any violence, any horrific violence is a tragedy,” Sullivan said. “We’re talking about teenagers that lost their life, unacceptable in the city of Brockton.”
Dan Glaun can be reached at dan.glaun@globe.com. Follow him @dglaun.
