Suffolk County, Boston | featured news

Nearly 300,000 people remained without power last night in the wake of the second nor’easter to hit Massachusetts in a week, and many of those outages are expected to last into the weekend, utility spokespeople said.As of 7:15 p.m., more than 277,924 households and businesses had no electricity, mostly in Eastern Massachusetts, according to the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency. The bulk of them — 223,230 — were National Grid customers, largely in the Merrimack Valley, MEMA said.

A Boston teacher is warning that the public schools’ shelter-in-place system may be compromised by classroom doors that won’t lock — and a city councilor is calling for a district-wide audit to find and fix any doors that would fail to keep out an active shooter.

Bristol prosecutors are asking the state’s highest court to throw out — or refine — the old Bay State law that erased Aaron Hernandez’s first-degree murder conviction from the books after he killed himself in his jail cell.

Police Commissioner William B. Evans says he has met with a couple of candidates vying for the Suffolk District Attorney position but has no intentions of making any endorsements heading into the November election.“I don’t get involved in politics,” Evans said yesterday outside the 42nd annual St. Patrick’s Day Luncheon for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston. “We have a difficult enough job without getting involved in supporting a candidate. I wish them all well, and I look forward to working with any one of them.”

An artillery shell that was left outside a Middleboro gun shop prompted officials to evacuate several surrounding businesses, divert traffic and call in the bomb squad, police said.

Witness Joanne O’Brien told jurors yesterday in the Puppy Doe case she had “never seen anything like” the docile but disfigured pit bull sitting in the middle of her Quincy street on Aug. 31, 2013.

A careful police investigation led to rape charges against the Boston IRS agent accused of sexually assaulting a handcuffed college student at gunpoint, police Commissioner William B. Evans told the Herald yesterday.“We were on that case from the get-go, and we presented the evidence. It took a little time because of forensic evidence and processing the gun,” Evans said. “(Suffolk District Attorney) Dan Conley doesn’t move until he has a solid case, and we built this case slowly, and I’m glad he was indicted.”

A Lowell man who was wearing body armor while selling heroin is facing drug and weapons charges after officers found fentanyl and guns in his home, police said.Paul Aaron, 31, was nabbed by Lowell detectives Wednesday after they witnessed him conduct a drug transaction at East Merrimack and Fayette streets, police said. Aaron was found to be in possession of 1,031 grams of heroin, police said.

West Brookfield residents are raising money to fund memorial services for a mother and her three children who authorities say were killed in their home last week.“The town is very saddened by this awful tragedy,” Doreen Piocheta said of the murders of Sara Bermudez, 38, and her children, Madison, 8, James, 6, and Michael, 2.“This is a small town. Everybody kind of knows everybody,” she said. “There is just no way the family can afford to bury four family members.”

An 80-year-old man lost his life in a two-alarm fire that broke out inside an Andover apartment complex yesterday, fire officials said.Firefighters responding to an 11:05 a.m. report of a fire at Andover Commons, a four-story building on Railroad Street found smoke pouring out of a fourth-floor apartment on the south side of the complex, Andover Fire Chief Michael Mansfield said in a statement.