Gunshot on River Street

I was flabbergasted to see this item in the Newton Tab police blotter:

Gunshot at West Newton pizza shop
A gun was shot at a River Street pizza store sometime during the night of Oct. 7-8. The bullet smashed through a double plate glass storefront window, through a menu board behind the cash register and into the steel stud behind the board. Police searched the surrounding area, but did not discover the bullet's casing.

A shot fired at a store? In Newton? Unbelievable. The Tab treats this as if this is no big deal -- it's the fifth item in the log, right after an tidbit about a prankster hanging a stuffed cow and sheep over the front entrance of the Mason-Rice school. But I was really shocked. River Street in Newton is not Blue Hill Avenue in Roxbury, and an incident like this should not be treated as a ho-hum occurance. There is no other information about the shooting -- motive, caliber, police suspicions, or other unusual circumstances. Or what neighbors think.

Old timers will know that this Pizza Shop is in the location that used to house Bunny's Market, right on the corner of River and Cherry. Some may also remember that another market a few hundred feet down River Street was torched by arsonists in the '90s. And that the Newton Police Station is just 500 or 600 feet away, off Cherry Street in West Newton Square.

Of course, these details probably have no bearing on the pizza shooting, but the Tab owes readers more than a three-line entry in the police blotter.