Jack Paulishen Photo
On Thursday, Antonio “Country” Holloway’s old principal gave him a suit and sent him to a job interview.
On Saturday night, someone shot Holloway on Norton Street.
Early Sunday morning, he died.
The Christmas murder is New Haven’s 34th homicide of the year.
Someone shot Holloway (pictured; note: this newer photo was substituted for another one on Tuesday morning) in the chest at 335 Norton Street at 8:45 p.m. on Christmas Eve, according to police spokesman Officer David Hartman. He was pronounced dead at Hospital of St. Raphael around 3:51 a.m.
Holloway, who was 19 years old, graduated from Hillhouse earlier this year, according to Principal Kermit Carolina.
He came to New Haven from down South in his junior year, according to another adult in the community who worked with him (and who asked Sunday to remain unidentified). Holloway lived with his sister through his time at Hillhouse. For the past year he has been homeless, going from “house to house.”
In the past week he asked several adults — a social worker, a cop, Carolina — for help in finding a job.
Carolina said he gave him a suit and a letter of recommendation, then sent him to Olive Street to apply for one of those new non-union school custodial jobs the city is filling. (Read about that here.)
Carolina, who was shaken by the news of Holloway’s death, said Sunday morning he was confident that Holloway would have gotten the job.
“He was going to be hired,” Carolina said.
According to the state judicial website, Holloway did have a pending case awaiting disposition. He had a Jan. 24 court date scheduled. The arrest file has been sealed.
It’s unclear whether Holloway’s homicide marks a new, or tied, threshold in New Haven.
Until recently, it was commonly reported by officials and others that New Haven’s record for homicides in one year was 34. That official number has changed over time.
According to Hartman, the most current official statistics show that 35 homicides took place in New Haven in 1989 and in 1990; 36 in 1991; and 33 in 1994.
Hartman Sunday explained the discrepancy.
In the past officials had recorded homicides by incident, he said. If two people were killed, for instance, the department considered that one homicide.
Recently the department went through old records to update the numbers and counted homicides by number of victims. That’s why the numbers have changed.