TAUNTON, Mass. — Less than three hours before Arthur “AJ” DaRosa embarked on a killing spree in a Myricks Street house and inside the Silver City Galleria, members of Taunton’s Community Crisis Intervention Team (CCIT) were in the mall’s community room wrapping up the first day of a three-day training session.
The horrific events of that May 10 evening included the stabbing deaths of a man and a woman, the wounding of two others by knives and, finally, a single gunshot by an off-duty sheriff’s deputy that killed DaRosa and put an end to the inexplicable carnage.
Notwithstanding the magnitude of the incident, which attracted national attention, the more than 50 people who previously signed up for that week’s CCIT “adult training” were back in class the next day.
“It was very somber,” said Taunton Patrolman Steve Turner, as to the mood in the room during that Wednesday’s three-hour session.
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Turner, a 29-year TPD veteran, is one of about 10 so-called core members of the city’s all-volunteer, crisis-intervention team.
Since its official inception in 2003 the group has encouraged and fostered partnerships between the police department, the Department of Mental Health and private mental-health groups, Morton Hospital, the school department and the adult and juvenile criminal court system.
