Case of Lynn man gunned down in 1993 remains unsolved

This is another story in a weekly series about cold cases in the city of Lynn.LYNN – On a snowy night in February 1993, George Hosking answered a knock at the door of a drug den he was visiting and was met by two armed men who shot him once in the chest after a bullet pierced the door he so fiercely tried to slam shut.Lynn Police Captain Mark O’Toole said Hosking, 33, of 130 Neptune Blvd., was near the brink of death when officers and EMTs arrived on scene at the 213 Washington St. apartment.As crews rushed to transport his near lifeless body to a waiting ambulance, Hosking’s wife cried out and fainted at the sight of her husband’s condition. He later died at Union Hospital.”Every second was critical with this case,” O’Toole said. “It could have been a drug transaction gone bad or even a thwarted home invasion. But to bring a gun into a home, it had to be some sort of a rip off.”O’Toole said the residents of the apartment were cocaine dealers and that they flushed away several grams of the drug before calling an ambulance or the police.Hosking, the father of a young child, had a criminal record and was allegedly involved in dealing cocaine with the couple that lived in the apartment.”At the time, Washington Street was a very active narcotics area,” O’Toole said. “What’s particularly frustrating about this case is that there were a lot of people in the area that night that may have seen something, but haven’t spoken up out of fear.”O’Toole said the suspects were described as black men, both with dark skin and between the ages of 17 and 21. One of the suspects had a slim build with either a chipped or missing front tooth, while the other had more of a pudgy build.A break was made in the case in December of 1994, when a 24-year-old Lynn man was arrested in connection with the murder. At the time of his arrest, he was carrying two bottles of liquor and a cookie, but no gun. O’Toole said the murder charge was later dropped and the investigation started again.”We conducted several interviews at the time, but don’t have a whole lot to go by,” he said. “It was probably someone who wasn’t foreign to the area. But there was also a home invasion in the same apartment a few months before the murder.”Anyone with information on this cold case is urged to call the police at 781-595-2000. Anonymous tips can also be submitted by texting the word tiplynn and the information to tip411 or 847411. Tips can be sent through the department’s website, www.lynnpolice.org, and clicking the submit tip icon.