Boston city employee facing accessory charges in connection with fatal shooting in Roxbury

Boston Globe

2 days ago

Her since-deleted LinkedIn page had said she works as a housing supervisor for the commission and that she received a criminal justice degree from Salem State University.
A spokesperson for the commission said Friday that the agency 'is aware of the pending criminal charges against the employee. This person has been placed on unpaid administrative leave.'
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Payroll records show she was hired by the commission, an independent public agency run by a board appointed by the mayor, in 2019. Her current title is housing coordinator, the commission said.
Her charges were
A statement of the case against Cherisme said she drove Charles Dixon, 40, in her gray Infiniti on April 19 to the area of the Nubian MBTA stop.
They got out of the car and Dixon began arguing with Ellis Santos, 36, on the sidewalk, according to the statement. As a crowd began to form, Cherisme and Dixon got back in the car, the statement said.
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As Cherisme drove away, Dixon allegedly fired a gun at Santos from the front passenger seat, missing him but hitting two bystanders and killing one of them, Andrew Owens, officials said.
Dixon last month pleaded not guilty to murder and weapons charges and is being held without bail, records show. Santos allegedly returned fire, striking the Infiniti, and is facing weapons charges, according to court records.
After the shooting, Cherisme dropped Dixon off where she had initially picked him up, the statement said.
A couple of hours later, early on April 20, Cherisme 'walked into the Boston Police Department' and told detectives she was standing on the sidewalk during the shooting, the statement said.
She allegedly told police that Santos was the 'primary aggressor,' and that she didn't recognize the person he argued with since everyone wore masks, the filing said.
'It was not until investigators received video surveillance footage of the incident that they learned that Santos was not the primary aggressor and that the defendant had actually driven the man later identified as Dixon, who was not wearing a mask during any of the interaction,' the statement said.
On May 5, Cherisme spoke to State Police investigators with her attorney present after receiving a 'proffer letter' indicating her statements wouldn't be used 'directly against her' unless she lied, the filing said.
During that session, she gave authorities a phone number that she said she used to call and text Dixon, the cell phone that she said she used to reach him, and her iCloud account information, records show.
She consented to an extraction of her phone's data as well as a search of her vehicle for forensic evidence, telling investigators it hadn't been cleaned or tampered with since the shooting, according to the statement.
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Virtually all those statements were false, authorities allege.
'With respect to the phone number she provided for Dixon, it was not a real phone number,' the filing said. 'Her own phone records, obtained by subpoena, revealed the actual number by which she contacted Dixon the night of the shooting. The number she provided appeared nowhere in her records.'
In addition, the phone she gave detectives wasn't the one she was using at the time of the shooting, as she claimed. Rather, it was purchased on April 22, 2025, three days after the shooting, the statement said.
And the iCloud account she provided had no data from the time of the shooting and 'appeared to have been created days after,' the statement said.
There was also a glaring issue with the Infiniti, according to the filing.
State Police observed 'a through-and-through bullet hole in one of the doors to the vehicle, with no corresponding exit hole elsewhere,' the document said. 'This would indicate that the projectile should still be within the vehicle.'
Yet it wasn't.
'A thorough search of the vehicle, including the partial disassembly of some components, was conducted, and no such projectile was located in the vehicle,' the statement said. 'This item, of significant evidentiary value, must have been removed from the vehicle prior to the search.'
A request for comment was sent to Mayor Michelle Wu's press office Friday.
The Middlesex District Attorney's office is handling Cherisme's case because she 'has a family member in law enforcement in Suffolk County,' a spokesperson for that office said.
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One of the defendants in the case is related to 'a BPD officer,'
a spokesperson for the Suffolk office said.
City payroll records indicate that someone with the same last name as Cherisme is employed as a Boston police criminalist.
Andrew Ryan of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Travis Andersen can be reached at