MBTA police issue plea for info 17 years after teen’s murder

Crime

The 16-year-old from Roxbury was murdered on New Year’s Eve in 2008 while on a bus in Dorchester, police said.

Seventeen years after Devonté Franklin, a 16-year-old boy from Roxbury, was murdered on an MBTA bus in Dorchester, police are still searching for his killer.

“PLEASE someone knows who his killer is,” MBTA Transit Police said Tuesday in a post on X. “Devonte & his family deserve justice.”

Franklin was stabbed to death at around 9:30 p.m. on Dec. 31, 2008 while aboard an MBTA bus. The bus was running on Route 28 and near Blue Hill Avenue and Harvard Street in Dorchester when Franklin was murdered.

Authorities said at the time that an altercation had taken place on the bus, but they didn’t know what caused it or with whom Franklin was fighting. The teen was brought to Boston Medical Center and pronounced dead.

Investigators searched for suspects and interviewed witnesses, but the case went cold. However, transit police have promised to continue pursuing the case.

In 2012, Franklin’s mother, Aretha Maugé, walked in his memory in the Mother’s Day Walk for Peace, which raises awareness of street violence in Boston. Maugé told The Boston Globe at the time that before his death, Franklin had been struggling with his parents’ separation and bullying at school.

“He told me the day that he died, he couldn’t take it anymore,’’ Maugé said. “He said I couldn’t teach him, the streets were too tough. … [He couldn’t] do it no more, the extra buses, the long way home to avoid conflict. He gave up.’’

Anyone with information about Franklin’s murder is urged to call transit police at 617-222-1050.