Thomas MacMillan Photo
(Updated) A 1 1/2‑year-old boy is expected to survive after he was shot in the stomach on Kensington Street in the Dwight neighborhood.
The shooting occurred on the porch of 60 Kensington St. Wednesday around 2:35 p.m. The little boy, Tramire Miller, had been sitting next to his aunt.
The shots came from someone firing out the window of a car traveling south on Kensington from Edgewood Avenue towards Chapel Street.
The child’s father, Timothy Miller, gathered the baby in his arms after the shooting and took the boy to the emergency room at the nearby St. Raphael campus of Yale-New Haven Hospital, where he was operated on.
The child’s condition was initially described as critical. By 3:25 p.m. police said it was stable. At around 5 p.m., the baby was be taken to Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital.
“It appears that the baby’s out of danger” of dying, Assistant Chief Archie Generoso said.
At 6:15 p.m. officials held a press conference outside Yale New-Haven’s Children’s Hospital, where Tramire had been moved.
Officials said that the boy was calm and that he will pull through. At one point he gave a nurse a high-five as he was moved from a gurney to his bed in the pediatric intensive care unit, according to Mayor John DeStefano.
Immediately after the shooting, police blocked off the area around Kensington and Edgewood. Nearby Troup School was temporarily locked down. Then the area was busy with parents walking backpack-toting kids home from school.
Police were looking for either a black 2010 Nissan Altima or a 2010 dark blue or black four-door Honda seen leaving the scene.
By 4 p.m. they expanded the crime scene to include more of the area around the three-story beige house where the shooting occurred. Detectives also reviewed footage from outdoor surveillance cameras belonging to the nearby Shop Smart corner store, but didn’t see anything useful, according to a worker there.
The house (pictured), part of the neighborhood’s scattered federally subsidized Kensington Square development, stands diagonally across the street from the Advance Child Care Center daycare at the corner of Kensington and Edgewood.
A woman and a daughter at the scene said they heard five shots. “She threw herself on the floor,” the mom said of the daughter.
Kylie Welsh, who is 34 and lives two houses away from corner of Edgewood and Kensington, said she was watching cartoons with her 3‑year-old son in their first-floor apartment. “I heard the gunshots,” at least six, she said. “You’re used to hearing gunshots, unfortunately.” What was strange, she said, was how “dead quiet” followed this incident, instead of the customary screaming.
Dwight Alderman Frank Douglass said neighbors feel it’s unsafe to be outside because of violence. “People in the neighborhood feel like they’re being held hostage. It’s crazy. I’m just sick and tired of it.”
Detectives were already pursuing “several substantial leads” in the drive-by shooting, police spokesman Officer David Hartman said at the scene at 3:40 p.m.
Chief Dean Esserman shuttled between the scene, where he huddled for updates with top cops, and the hospital, where he spoke with the family.
Shots were reported fired earlier in the day on Stevens Street in the Hill. It was unknown if the two incidents were linked.
At the 6:15 p.m. press conference outside the Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital on Howard Avenue, Mayor DeStefano said Tramire was “calm and alert.”
“We look forward to his recovery,” he said.
“Kensington has been quiet all summer,” the mayor (at left in photo) noted. “I think it’s an amazingly cold thing for anyone to be a part of this.”
DeStefano said Tramire’s mom, Sherie, is asking anyone with information about the shooting “to please trust and work with the police department.”
“A child of this city is a child of us all,” said Chief Dean Esserman (at right in photo).
Police will continue to work the case into the night, Esserman said. DeStefano said the city’s street outreach workers are being deployed.
Shirley West, the head of the street outreach program, said workers would be fanning out to the neighborhood to try to prevent any further violence, including any retaliation.
“We’ll continue to say to people, ‘The baby’s OK. We don’t need to take this any further,’” she said.