Watertown Police arrested a Worcester man for the armed robbery of a hair salon on Wednesday.
Police located Joseph Boyda, 44, and place him under arrest on Thursday for armed robbery while masked. He was arraigned in Waltham District Court on Friday, said Watertown Police Lt. James O’Connor.
On Wednesday at about 7 p.m., Boyda allegedly robbed the Behind the Hair salon on Main Street in Watertown while wearing a mask and sunglasses. He used a gun to fire into the air. Police recovered the casing which turned out to be from a blank round used in a starter’s gun, according to Watertown Police. He took an undisclosed amount of cash.
The Watertown Police received help in identifying a suspect, O’Connor said.
“The Newton Police Department assisted us in helping to identify the suspect,” O’Connor said. “(Newton) had two previous non-arrestable encounters with him.”
Newton Police located Boyda in Newton, and the Watertown Police took him into custody, recovered evidence and continued the investigation, O’Connor said..
Boyda is homeless, O’Connor said, but most recently resided in Worcester. This was not the first arrest for Boyda, who has faced criminal charges several previous times for incidents in Worcester, dating back to 2006. He also received prison sentences on multiple occasions.
In 2007 he was sentenced to prison for assault and battery and resisting arrest, according to a Worcester Telegram report.
He received a prison sentence of a year in 2010 after being found guilty of larceny over $250, possession of burglary tools, and carrying a dangerous weapon — a hunting knife, the Telegram reported.
Boyda was arrested for, among other charges, assault and battery on a police officer in 2011, according to the Telegram.
In 2013, Boyda was again sentenced to prison after being found guilty of possession of Class E drugs, assault and battery with dangerous weapon — a shod foot, and attempting to commit a crime, the Telegram reported.
In 2018, Boyda faced numerous charges, after being arrested on two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon — pavement and a metal dumpster, assault with a dangerous weapon after using a knife, strangulation, kidnapping and intimidation of a witness, along with drug possession, according to the Telegram.
The amount of arrests are many but obviously the punishment is minimal and these are only the crimes he was apprehended. Imagine how many other victims there were. Yet, we have politicians & District Attorney’s who don’t even want to prosecute someone like this since the crimes “aren’t serious enough”! Is it any wonder that the “man” who just killed 7 innocent people had 6 arrests in 6 years while here with a Green Card and yet he had a commercial driver’s license along with a serious drug habit. Is this “justice”? Of course, it doesn’t matter to the dead whether it was his fault or the fault of the R.M.V., correct?
Will this dangerous repeat criminal be incarcerated for a long time now or will our criminal justice system, that is now being very lenient on criminals, let him out to do more damage and possibly end up killing someone?