Vincent Kinan, his sister, Deborah and wife, Tracy, found themselves standing on the edge of Chinatown yesterday afternoon, at the corner of Chauncy and Essex streets, the very spot where 72-year-old Yuzhen Lei was fatally knocked down Wednesday morning by a fellow pedestrian in a powerful rush to get nowhere.
“Oh, my God, that’s all we’ve been talking about for the past day or so,” said Vincent Kinan, a pharmacist who grew up in Brockton and relocated to Las Vegas.
“We came back home for a week and heard about what happened to that poor woman. I knew it took place in this general area, but I didn’t realize we were standing there.”
There were no bouquets of flowers, no vigil candles to mark the spot where a diminutive grandmother took her last steps before encountering Tajanetta Downing, 24, who is alleged to have bowled over Yuzhen Lei, pushing her to the ground and then kept on walking in the ?direction of Downtown Crossing.
Yuzhen Lei was a just a few steps away from her apartment building when she was leveled, only to die several hours later in the hospital.
“This is not a Boston issue,” Vincent Kinan said. “It’s sad and so senseless, but I’ll tell you we’ve seen it at Disneyland. The general level of rudeness and ?inconsideration that some people show toward other people has, sadly, become a fact of life.”
In this case, it was also criminal. Tajanetta Downing was arrested and charged with aggravated assault and battery, plus assault and battery of a person 60 years or older.
On Wednesday morning, ?Tajanetta Downing, 5 feet 8 inches tall, 190 pounds with a history of explosive episodes that attracted police attention in the past, was essentially a human torpedo, unwilling to alter her path for ?Yuzhen Lei.
Handcuffed in the arraignment dock, Downing bawled like a baby, but offered no explanation of why she essentially walked over Yuzhen Lei.
Cindy Wilson, who often takes the train from Worcester into Boston to shop in Chinatown, said she loves the community but always stays alert.
“It can be sketchy sometimes,” Wilson said.
“You have to be aware of the people around you.”
Yuzhen Lei, however, surely felt comfortable in her neighborhood, said Wilson, comfortable enough to cross the street near her home without anticipating that calamity would befall her. And, said Wilson, Yuzhen Lei probably believed other people, in her own neighborhood, would grant her due deference.
“She was home in her neighborhood,” she said.
All of this might have been somewhat easier to understand if Tajanetta Downing had been driving a car and ran down ?Yuzhen Lei as she was crossing the street.
But Downing basically stepped over her and kept on going. It was hit and run … on foot.
“I take the train in from Douglas to shop here,” Cindy Wilson said, “to get my hair done and absorb the city.
“I love it. But I always keep my eyes open, because I have to.”
