Chelsea youth violence: How a mother's effort to protect her son ended in tragedy

Boston Globe

26-05-2025

Juan's killing and other recent incidents of youth violence have reopened wounds in Chelsea, a place where young people are becoming victims of violent crime in numbers not seen in more than a decade. Chelsea officials said they are working urgently to protect the city's kids, with weekly interagency meetings where police, public health, and
Youth violence isn't new for many families in Chelsea. Members of the international street gang
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But the city is much more than its history of violence.
It is a
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The Tobin Bridge loomed over Broadway in Chelsea in 2020.
Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff
It's a community worth protecting, say community leaders who seek to thwart the return of past levels of violence.
'There are kids that are either gang involved or being
Efforts to reach young people like Juan Carlos. It has been two months since that
chilly evening
when he didn't come home; that night, when Lemus learned in the Chelsea police station that her son was dead. On a recent morning, she sat with a caseworker from Dorchester's Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, mustering the strength to talk about her son. She clasped a framed photograph of Juan Carlos to her knees; when she tried to speak, her voice caught in her throat.
'I brought him over here so he wouldn't face the violence in El Salvador,' Lemus said.
But violence found them, as it has found other young people in Chelsea
in recent years, even as overall violent crime has dropped since the mid-2010s. There were 67 violent crimes reported against people 18 or younger in 2023, a 45 percent increase over the previous year. Those crimes dropped last year but spiked again in the first four months of 2025. This year, more than half of those victims are 15 or younger, including a friend of Juan Carlos who was stabbed in the same incident but survived.
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This is the story of one mother who tried, but couldn't escape that violence.
In 2007, Juan Carlos was born in an Iowa hospital — Lemus said she was there on vacation, but fell ill and was unable to fly back before giving birth. Eventually, they returned to El Salvador, where violence had already torn her family apart. Her mother and her brother had been killed when she was four years old, during the country's civil war, and the father of her oldest son was also slain before Juan Carlos was born. Lemus said she never learned who killed them.
At that time, San Salvador, the capital city where they lived, was no place to raise a child, she said. So when Juan Carlos was seven, they immigrated to Chelsea, where her sister lived. In 2015, the year they came here, the collapse of a truce between MS-13 and rival gang Barrio 18 led to a massive spike in homicides in El Salvador, giving the country the
.
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Many Salvadorans immigrated to the U.S. to escape the gangs. But the effects of the violence often stayed with them.
'As young people come from Central America, they often come from incredibly difficult circumstances,' said Ron Schmidt, a Chelsea Public Schools administrator who runs an outreach program for at-risk students. 'They have been through significant trauma.'
Lemus believed she had left all that behind. Juan Carlos attended elementary school in Chelsea
before the family moved to Everett in 2017. He was a sharp, well-behaved kid, and Lemus said she tried to protect him. Juan Carlos never saw or experienced violence at home, she said.
'My house was full of values, honor, and respect,' she said.
But at school, Juan Carlos was beyond her protection. Other students subjected him to intense bullying once he reached middle school, his mother said. For Lemus, who wanted more than anything to help, it was wrenching to watch. Juan Carlos would bottle up his emotions, then explode crying; he told one therapist he might be better off dead.
'After that, he was never the same,' Lemus said. 'He always had a dark stare.'
Lemus, 44, is soft-spoken, obviously shaken. She works at a check cashing business in Chelsea. She had meetings with police officers and the principal of Juan Carlos's middle school, asking them to step in, she said, but the bullying continued. She could feel it slipping — her dream of a safer life for her son, the reason they had traveled so far from her home.
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In 2022, Juan Carlos was walking near the George
Keverian School in Everett when he got into a fight with a classmate. According to court filings, the dispute was over a girl. Lemus's classmate told police he told Lemus to stop bothering a friend of his, after which Lemus grabbed him.
The classmate ran home and told his father, 45-year-old Mark Luiso, that Juan Carlos had threatened him, according to court records. Luiso, a licensed gun owner who worked as a security guard, armed himself and went to confront Juan Carlos. There was a struggle, and Juan Carlos fatally stabbed Luiso. Police found a large knife at the scene.
The Luiso family was shattered, and the Lemus family uprooted. They moved from Everett back to Chelsea, where Juan Carlos initially attended Chelsea High School before switching to an alternative remote learning program.
Last year, Middlesex prosecutors charged Juan Carlos with manslaughter as an adult. He was released pending trial, but was ordered to abide by a nightly curfew and stay out of Everett. The case was dismissed after his death.
Luiso's family did not respond to requests for comment. Lemus would not discuss the stabbing for this story. It was a painful memory, she said, one she did not wish to revisit.
Chelsea officials said they are working hard to prevent youth violence, and spare other families the pain experienced by Lemus and the Luisos.
Roca, a
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At-risk youth — suffering from trauma or at the center of urban violence — attended a personal finance class in a program hosted by the nonprofit Roca in Chelsea in 2021.
Lane Turner/Globe Staff
The city is dedicated to supporting young people, said Chelsea Police Chief Keith Houghton. But gangs are replenishing their numbers by recruiting from younger and younger kids, and low-level violence can escalate if not interrupted, he said.
'It will start with fist fights after school. Eventually, it'll go to bats or any object they have. Then it'll go to knives, and that's where we'll have the stabbings. And eventually they do get firearms,' Houghton said.
City Council President Norieliz DeJesus said there is an urgent need to reach the city's middle school-aged children before they become victims or perpetrators of violence.
'We're not tailoring the programs to really engage that generation,' said DeJesus. 'And that's the generation that's running around with guns.'
The day before Juan Carlos died, Flor could sense something was wrong. He seemed saddened, upset in ways unexplained by any normal shift in teenage mood. She recalled trying to get him to open up, asking what was wrong.
'Why are you asking me?' he challenged.
'Because I can see it in your face,' she said. 'Something's going on.'
Crime scene tape remained tied to a signpost in Chelsea the day after the stabbing that killed Juan Carlos on March 9.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff
His response was vague, but troubling. There were people who wanted to inflict harm, he explained; there were others who could not have the tools to defend themselves because it was illegal. Lemus tried to make sense of what he was saying. In an attempt to cheer Juan Carlos up, she took him to Burger King. It had always been his favorite.
The next day, Lemus left the house to go to work. When she returned, Juan Carlos wasn't home, so she texted him, asking where he was; he said he was going to a friend's house. She told him to be careful and come home early. The clock passed 7 p.m., then 8. He stopped responding to texts. A growing fear anchored itself into her mind, but she pushed it back, clinging to the hope that he would show up at the door. By 10, she could no longer take the anxiety and ran into the street to look for him.
As she searched, her phone rang. It was the police.
'Are you the mother of Juan Carlos?' the officer asked. She said yes, and the officer told her to head to the police station, but did not tell her why. Her mind raced, grasping for explanations that would allow her to see her son again. When she arrived, the police told her the crushing truth: her son was gone.
'To this day, I can't believe this happened. This has been so hard,' Lemus said, her voice breaking. 'The short life he lived — the people bullying him and doing him wrong.'
No one has been arrested for his killing.
When Lemus is asked to think of her son in better times, she pauses. A memory comes to her — a trip they took to Miami with her sister in 2016. Juan Carlos, nine years old, spending hours building castles in the sand. He had so little pain and so much promise.
Dan Glaun can be reached at