ROCHESTER - Robert Hampton was stabbed to death for refusing to let a panhandler pump his gas. A bullet killed 12-year-old Frederick Lewis Jr. as he walked home from a canceled sleep-over. Vivian Irizarry was strangled by a suspected serial killer whose twin brother was imprisoned for murder in 1971.
A bloody autumn catapulted the stubbornly high homicide toll in Rochester to 54 by Christmas weekend, 17 more killings than in 2004.
While the murder rate nationally has dropped over the past decade, some cities - such as Boston and Philadelphia - are seeing it spike. In Boston, the number of slayings has more than doubled in the past several years, climbing from 31 in 1999 to 71 through mid-December.
In contrast, New York City was on target to record one of its lowest annual homicide rates in recent history. There were 515 killings in the five boroughs by Dec. 18, compared with 572 in all of 2004.
Killings in this city of 220,000 declined from a peak of 68 in 1993 to 29 in 1999 before surging again to 56 in 2003. A community policing strategy sharply curtailed street killings last year, but the toll shot back up this year.
Seven victims were younger than 18, prompting renewed calls for a juvenile curfew designed to pinpoint families in desperate need of help.
Lewis, a sixth-grader, went to spend the night at a friend's house on July 8 but the other boy wasn't there. He was being accompanied home with his 16-year-old brother when they noticed someone following them. The boys started to run, and gunfire erupted. A bullet ripped through the younger boy's chest.
Police arrested Royal Carmichael, 26, who they say confessed to the killing but gave no reasons. His murder trial was set for February.
The bulk of the killings occurred in the Crescent, a bleak ring of black and Latino neighborhoods stretching from the city's northeast to southwest sections. So far, 33 of the 54 deaths have led to arrests.
“We're on the high side in terms of clearances,” a police spokesman, Investigator Joseph Dominick, said Friday.
Kim Wilson, 36, pleaded guilty last month to killing Hampton, 20, who was stabbed on a street corner in May after he refused to let Wilson pump his gas in exchange for money. Wilson maintained the death resulted from a drug deal gone bad, but investigators found no evidence of drugs.
“I hope that God will have mercy on your soul because I surely don't have any,” said the victim's mother, Labertha Walker.
Authorities say Robert Spahalski, 50, walked into a police station last month and confessed to strangling Irizarry, 54, who lived in an adjoining apartment, and Charles Grande, 40, a landscape company owner who was beaten to death in 1991.
Spahalski also was being investigated for his possible involvement in at least two more killings dating back to the early 1990s. Grand jury indictments were expected to be unsealed in January.
Spahalski's identical twin, Stephen, was 16 years old when he stabbed to death a store owner in Elmira 34 years ago. He could be freed from Attica prison in April.
“I thought I was the only murderer in the family,” he said in a recent jailhouse interview with the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.
While the murder rate nationally has dropped over the past decade, some cities - such as Boston and Philadelphia - are seeing it spike. In Boston, the number of slayings has more than doubled in the past several years, climbing from 31 in 1999 to 71 through mid-December.
In contrast, New York City was on target to record one of its lowest annual homicide rates in recent history. There were 515 killings in the five boroughs by Dec. 18, compared with 572 in all of 2004.
Killings in this city of 220,000 declined from a peak of 68 in 1993 to 29 in 1999 before surging again to 56 in 2003. A community policing strategy sharply curtailed street killings last year, but the toll shot back up this year.
Seven victims were younger than 18, prompting renewed calls for a juvenile curfew designed to pinpoint families in desperate need of help.
Lewis, a sixth-grader, went to spend the night at a friend's house on July 8 but the other boy wasn't there. He was being accompanied home with his 16-year-old brother when they noticed someone following them. The boys started to run, and gunfire erupted. A bullet ripped through the younger boy's chest.
Police arrested Royal Carmichael, 26, who they say confessed to the killing but gave no reasons. His murder trial was set for February.
The bulk of the killings occurred in the Crescent, a bleak ring of black and Latino neighborhoods stretching from the city's northeast to southwest sections. So far, 33 of the 54 deaths have led to arrests.
“We're on the high side in terms of clearances,” a police spokesman, Investigator Joseph Dominick, said Friday.
Kim Wilson, 36, pleaded guilty last month to killing Hampton, 20, who was stabbed on a street corner in May after he refused to let Wilson pump his gas in exchange for money. Wilson maintained the death resulted from a drug deal gone bad, but investigators found no evidence of drugs.
“I hope that God will have mercy on your soul because I surely don't have any,” said the victim's mother, Labertha Walker.
Authorities say Robert Spahalski, 50, walked into a police station last month and confessed to strangling Irizarry, 54, who lived in an adjoining apartment, and Charles Grande, 40, a landscape company owner who was beaten to death in 1991.
Spahalski also was being investigated for his possible involvement in at least two more killings dating back to the early 1990s. Grand jury indictments were expected to be unsealed in January.
Spahalski's identical twin, Stephen, was 16 years old when he stabbed to death a store owner in Elmira 34 years ago. He could be freed from Attica prison in April.
“I thought I was the only murderer in the family,” he said in a recent jailhouse interview with the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.
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