BOSTON -- Boston police are searching for the gunman who shot and killed a 29-year-old woman who was sitting on her porch Thursday night.

The victim, identified as Deana Wadkins, was sitting outside a home on 4 Arbutus St. in Dorchester about 8 p.m. when she was shot in the head, police said.

Wadkins was taken to Boston Medical Center and died a short time later. The gunman fled on a bicycle.

Police said Wadkins was targeted, and they said drugs may have been a motive.

"It was not a random shooting. All the evidence we have at this point indicates that she was the intended victim" Boston police Commissioner Ed Davis said.

"They were sitting right there in front of their house bothering nobody, doing their business, eating food and playing with the kids and everything and I got the call that she got shot," said friend Reinaldo Figueroa.

Figueroa said he couldn't think of any reason why anyone would want to shoot his friend. "I really can't. Maybe someone around here, but not her."

Wadkins was the mother of three children.

"It's a terrible tragedy for the children. We have to do what we can to get them the help they need to move on," Davis said.

Shortly after the shooting, an angry crowd gathered on Blue Hill Avenue, chasing a man who they believed may have been involved in the attack, forcing police to protect him from the mob.

"The crowd was pretty big and very boisterous," an officer said.

Two people were taken into custody for questioning, but no one was charged in connection with the porch shooting.

The Arbutus attack was the latest in a rash of violence as the city heads into the summer months. Last week, a 70-year-old woman was shot and a 3-year-old grazed as bullets flew near a Dorchester liquor store. The week before that, Soheil Turner, 15, was shot twice in the head as he waited on Dudley Street while on his way to school.