Detective Sherman Griffiths, 36, an eight-year veteran of the Boston Police Department, was shot while serving a search warrant on the evening of February 17, 1988. The Drug Control Unit was attempting to enter a third-floor apartment at 104 Bellevue Street in Dorchester when, as Griffiths attempted to breach the door with a sledgehammer at about 8:00 PM, a single .45 caliber bullet struck him in the head. He died the following morning.

Officers traced the weapon to an adjacent first-floor apartment where several people were gathered. Witnesses said a black Jamaican man arrived shortly after the shots and tried to hand off a handgun; one resident hid the gun under a mattress. The recovered firearm was later identified as the weapon that fired the fatal shot. The suspect, an undocumented immigrant from Jamaica, was arrested, indicted for murder and armed assault with intent to murder, and tried after a change of venue. He was acquitted in 1990 and subsequently taken into custody by immigration authorities and deported to Jamaica.

What details about the Dorchester operation or the events inside those apartments might help explain how the shooting occurred?