BOSTON — A 20-year-old Boston man is being held without bail after pleading not guilty in a fatal stabbing that was the city’s first homicide of the new year.

An apparently unrelated fatal shooting a few hours later was the second killing on the same day that Boston’s new police commissioner promised a crackdown on violent crime.

Police say a fight led to the 6 p.m. Thursday stabbing of a 19-year-old man in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood. Twenty-year-old William Earl is charged with murder. Family members of the alleged victim who attended Earl’s arraignment identified him as Samuel Constant.

Police say a man also was shot several times in the city’s Roslindale section just after 11 p.m. Thursday.

Boston had a 13-year low of 40 homicides in 2013.

Mayor Martin Walsh named William Evans police commissioner on Thursday.

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