The man accused of opening fire on motorists along Memorial Drive in Cambridge on Monday afternoon had been released from prison early last year, after a parole board let him serve the rest of his sentence under supervision.
Tyler Brown was convicted in 2020 of shooting at Boston police officers and was sentenced in 2021 to five to six years in state prison, even as Suffolk prosecutors sought 10 to 12 years. The Massachusetts Parole Board granted him early release from MCI-Shirley in May 2025, allowing him to finish the sentence in the community under parole conditions.
Brown is now accused of firing at vehicles on one of Cambridge’s busiest roads less than a year after that release. Two people were shot and suffered life-threatening injuries. The case has quickly become a political flashpoint, with Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Shortsleeve blasting the parole decision on Tuesday and arguing the violence should never have happened.
The parole board said Brown had completed Violence Reduction, Criminal Thinking and a bachelor's program at Tufts University before his release. It also said he suffered from a mental health disorder involving PTSD, depression and anxiety, took medication daily and was smoking THC in the community to increase his appetite. Brown was remorseful about his role in the earlier attack, the board said, and his release came with conditions that included electronic monitoring for the first 90 days, prescribed medication, drug and alcohol supervision, mental health counseling, no contact with victims or their families, and reporting to parole and probation offices.
That record now sits in sharp contrast to the allegations on Memorial Drive. State Police Colonel Geoffrey D. Noble described the response as heroic, saying a trooper and a veteran, a former Marine, stood in the direct line of fire in front of the shooter and the people they were trying to protect. Noble said the episode showed “an incredible act of bravery” and called it among the most heroic things he has seen in more than 30 years in law enforcement.
Shortsleeve said the shooting was “entirely preventable” and accused the Parole Board and Gov. Maura Healey of treating criminals like victims and victims like afterthoughts. He said that if elected governor, he would fire every member of the board. The board has not publicly addressed Brown’s latest accusation, and a spokesperson said further information about his time in the custody of the Department of Correction or under parole supervision is exempt from disclosure under CORI confidentiality law and several state regulations.
For Brown, the parole file that once weighed education, treatment and remorse now reads against the backdrop of a new and far more violent accusation. For Massachusetts, the question is no longer whether he was given a second chance, but whether the system that granted it missed a danger that was still very much alive.
