BOSTON -- A Dorchester man says he regrets not calling police after his nephew, now charged with murdering two family members, held a gun to his head and threatened to kill him.
MacArthur Powell survived that harrowing run-in last month with his nephew, Terry Gray.
Three weeks later, Gray allegedly shot and killed Charles Wilson, 65, his aunt's longtime boyfriend. Three days after that, prosecutors said, Gray shot his stepfather, 61-year-old James Gray, in the head
Powell, 62, said he didn't call police because he didn't want to upset his sister, Inell, who is Terry Gray's mother.
"I should have called the police," Powell told The Boston Globe. "It could have saved some people's lives. I didn't know he was going to do this."
Gray, who pleaded innocent to murder charges on Monday, also faces an assault charge stemming from the alleged confrontation at Powell's apartment on the morning of June 18.
Powell said he and Gray were arguing over money and a decades-old fight between Powell and Gray's biological father when Gray pulled out a gun and ordered him to get on his knees.
"Do you want to see God, or do you want to see the devil?" Gray asked as he held the gun to his temple, Powell said.
But Gray left without firing the gun, saying, "See you later, Mac," Powell recalled.
"It must not have been time for me to go," he said.
A spokesman for the Suffolk district attorney's office wouldn't comment on a possible motive, but Gray apparently has a history of mental illness.
Gray served more than 10 years in prison for stabbing a teenager to death in 1983, when he was 15 years old. During his trial in that case, Gray's lawyers argued that he had mental health problems.
