BOSTON, July 10, 2015— A getaway driver in the 2003 shooting that claimed the lives of Jose Daveiga and Christopher Carvalho finally appeared in a Suffolk County courtroom today – nearly a decade after he fled town to avoid testifying at an associate’s murder trial, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

CARLOS SILVA (D.O.B. 3/4/83) was arraigned today on indictments charging two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the April 28, 2003, shooting that left 22-year-old DeVeiga dead and 24-year-old Carvalho paralyzed until his death four years later.  At the request of First Assistant District Attorney Patrick Haggan, Clerk Magistrate Gary Wilson ordered Silva held without bail.

According to prosecutors, the victims were leaving a Chinatown nightclub shortly at approximately 2:30 a.m. on April 28, 2003, and en route to a 24-hour store to get food when they were observed by members of a larger group that included Silva.  A member of that group believed he recognized a man accompanying DaVeiga and Carvalho as being involved in a shooting approximately one week earlier that left a friend of the group paralyzed.

The group entered two vehicles – one a car driven by Silva and the other a minivan driven by DANIEL FERNANDES (D.O.B. 1/16/85) – and followed the vehicle in which both victims were passengers.  As the victims’ vehicle stopped at the intersection of East Berkeley and Albany streets, Silva pulled up alongside it and a member of the group fired at least eight shots from a 9 mm semiautomatic firearm into the vehicle.  As the driver of the victims’ vehicle turned onto East Berkeley Street to flee the gunfire, he struck a parked car.  Daniel Fernandes pulled the minivan alongside it and two gunmen fired on the vehicle from the van’s open sliding door, prosecutors said.

DeVeiga was struck three times in the upper body and later pronounced dead at Boston Medical Center.  Carvalho was shot in the left eye and neck, leaving him paralyzed.  He died in 2007 of pneumonia at the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital, where he had remained confined to a bed and reliant upon machinery to provide oxygen. He was the fifth cousin from a single family to die from violent crime, preceded by Bobby Mendes in 1995, Larry Andrade in 1996, Luis Carvalho in 2000, and Alex “Matthew” Mendes in 2006.

Within an hour of the shooting, Boston Police stopped the minivan with Silva as a passenger; he had left the car he was driving during the murder at a Dorchester residence.  Also in the vehicle were driver Daniel Fernandes and passenger ODAIR FERNANDES (D.O.B. 8/16/83).

Silva and Daniel Fernandes were both indicted as accessories after the fact to murder pursuant to a cooperation agreement that required each to testify truthfully at the trial of Odair Fernandes and the two other gunmen, but they fled the area on the eve of the 2006 trial.  Odair Fernandes was ultimately convicted of first-degree murder; prosecutors were forced to terminate murder charges against two additional defendants with the option of refiling charges at a later date.

Prosecutors subsequently indicted Silva and Daniel Fernandes in 2007 for first-degree murder after their cooperation agreements were deemed null and void.

Fernandes surrendered and pleaded guilty to his role in the homicides.  Silva remained on the run for nearly a decade, during while time he assumed at least one new identity and obtained a Rhode Island driver’s license under a false name.  He was apprehended yesterday in Hyde Park by members of a joint task force of Boston Police and US Marshals.

Kara Hayes, director of the DA’s Victim-Witness Assistance Program, is the assigned victim-witness advocate.  Silva was represented by Jay W. Carney.

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All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.