A former Concord man who was active at local Catholic churches was killed in a fight in Boston late last month, police said.
Stephen Cherup, 50, was beaten so badly in a Massachusetts Avenue street fight Oct. 22 that he died at Boston Medical Center the next day, the Suffolk County district attorney’s office said in a press release.
The man accused of beating him, 53-year-old Peter McGowan of Boston, was charged with murder. Both men appeared to be homeless at the time, police said.
Cherup, who is from Pittsburgh, Pa., lived in Concord in recent years, singing, cleaning up and helping out at Christ the King Parish churches, said Father Richard Roberge, the pastor.
Roberge said Cherup was faithful and optimistic, even as he struggled with addiction and probably mental illness.
“He tried not to allow the demons to take over,” Roberge said. “He tried to be positive and loving and of service to others.”
Cherup spent a lot of time at Sacred Heart Church and St. John the Evangelist Chuch, singing each week in the choir and preparing for weekend services.
“I would see him often on Friday afternoons or evenings, when I was setting up the church for the weekend,” Roberge said. “He was vacuuming, cleaning. He would do that on Saturday mornings as well.”
Roberge said he respected and admired Cherup’s effort “to be the best he could be in his daily life.”
Cherup was once nominated to serve on the church’s pastoral council. Although he wasn’t confirmed, “that just shows you that other people,” including those on the choir with him, “also thought highly of him,” Roberge said.
About a year ago, Roberge said, Cherup was forced to move from his subsidized housing in Concord to Manchester.
“He never told me the reason,” Roberge said. “Some of it may have been financial.”
Although police said he appeared to be homeless when he died in Boston last month, Cherup remained positive in his public posts to Facebook. He reminded his rowdy and adventurous friends, for instance, that, “You can achieve anything sober.”
Hours before he became engaged in the fight that took his life, he made one last post to Facebook.
It said: “If nobody told you they luv you I do.”
(Nick Reid can be reached at 369-3325, nreid@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @NickBReid.)