Contrary to initial reports, cops may have been chasing a stolen Toyota Highlander as it flew up an embankment and crashed into a synagogue, killing both of the vehicle’s occupants.
Paul Bass Photo
Tay Brown lighting a memorial candle for his cousin at the crash scene.
New Haven police plan an internal investigation into why and how that chase took place.
The crash took place at 1:35 a.m. Monday.
Seventy minutes earlier, two men claiming to have a gun held up a man at Blake and Fitch Streets and stole his 2005 Toyota.
An officer spotted the car around an hour later at Whalley and Winthrop. According to police, the officer called for back-up and then tried to “initiate a stop.”
Then, in the words of a New Haven police department press release issued later Monday morning, “the driver fled from police. Minutes later, officers found the stolen car. It had crashed into the Congregation Beth El Keser [Israel] Synagogue, located at 85 Harrison Street.” Based on that official statement, statewide media continued reporting through Monday night that police had “lost sight of” the Toyota, and later “the car was then found crashed into the synagogue, police said.”
At the scene early Monday, police officials concluded that there had been a chase and that the two men died in a police pursuit — which is why New Haven immediately asked the state police to take over the investigation, said Assistant Police Chief Tony Reyes.
Under a policy agreed upon with the state prosecutor’s office, state police handle any local investigations into any “officer-involved” pursuit that ends in a fatality.
“We’re not denying that there was a pursuit,” Reyes said. “The fact that we gave it to the state police meant” that the local cops recognized that a “police-involved pursuit” had preceded the crash.
Surveillance video from the time of the incident shows three cars with flashing lights on the heels of a vehicle speeding up the hill on Whalley Avenue toward Harrison.
The video was recorded from the security footage captured by a camera at Congregation Beth El Keser Israel (BEKI). The synagogue does not have a camera out front, where the crash occurred. It does have one in the parking lot behind the building.
That camera recorded the footage appearing at the top of this story.
In the far right-hand corner of the video, a vehicle is seen speeding up the hill of Whalley Avenue toward Harrison, where the city recently installed a traffic-calming divider, at 1:35:37 a.m. (Note: The synagogue video system’s timer is 10 minutes off. So in the video the time reads as 1:25:37.)
Immediately following that vehicle, three cars with lights flashing appear on the screen, between the 41 and 46-second mark.
It is obviously up to investigators to nail down the details of that video that laypeople cannot — such as which vehicles were which, how fast they were traveling.
The Toyota smashed into an exterior wall of the synagogue, damaging a portion of the social hall. The wall is up a grassy embankment set back dozens of feet from Whalley Avenue.
The only tread marks visible on the path to the wall it struck appear close to Whalley, not along the path to the building.
The synagogue’s video shows police lights continuing to flash off a neighboring building (the empty former Hallock’s department store) from that point on.
New Haven Probe Planned, Too
WTNH Photo
The morning after.
Assistant Chief Reyes said that once state police complete their investigation into the fatal crash, the New Haven police will then conduct their own internal investigation. “We don’t want our investigation to impact their investigation,” he said. He said members of New Haven’s internal affairs unit were called to the scene Monday morning.
New Haven’s internal probe will examine the decision to conduct the chase, Reyes said.
Department policy allows officers to chase fleeing drivers if the case involves a “serious felony,” Reyes said. “In this particular case we have someone being held at gunpoint, or someone simulated a gun and carjacked them. So it is a serious felony.”
The officer is supposed to radio in the chase, so that a supervisor can monitor it. That did happen in the early Monday morning incident, he said.
“The question is going to be the ‘reasonableness’ of the chase,” Reyes said. Officers are supposed to weigh the benefits of a chase against the chase’s potential threat to public safety.
Reyes said he couldn’t comment on details of the Monday morning incident until the state completed its investigation.
“It’s important in these cases not to jump to conclusions,” but rather allow the investigations to arrive at factual conclusions, Reyes added.
The two men who died in the crash were identified as Tommy Clayton Brown, 23, of New Haven, and Andrew Bolden-Velez, 20, of West Haven. More than a dozen of their friends and relatives gathered at the crash site to light memorial candles and pay respects. Inside the synagogue, the daily evening prayer took place as usual.
Afterward, Tay Brown (pictured) arrived to pay his own respects to Tommy Brown. He said Tommy was his cousin and they grew up together in the Hill. He said his cousin’s first child is expected to be born in a couple of months.
Note: The author of this story is a congregant at Beth El Keser Israel.