Thomas MacMillan Photo
Tamika Brockenberry had given up hope that cops would find the gunman who killed her brother and a young mother 11 years ago.
“So it was such a surprise when I got that phone call,” she said.
The call came Thursday from a New Haven cop, who announced police had solved the case.
Tamika (pictured above with her niece Manteiya) and her family showed up to a press conference Friday on the third floor of police headquarters, where cops announced the good news to the public: New Haven police, working with the FBI, arrested a man for allegedly shooting two people to death in 2000. It’s the first test of an ambitious new joint effort to re-investigate 101 unsolved murders dating back to 1979.
“A lot of years,” Tamika muttered, standing behind her niece. She shook her head slowly. Then her face crumpled and she began to cry.
Her brother, Lamont Brockenberry, and a young mom named Lakeia Vaughn were gunned down on June 1, 2000. Police say a man known as “Mousey” shot both of them dead at 500 – 502 Winthrop Ave. Despite an effort by then-Detective Stacy Spell to revisit the investigation in 2002, the homicides became one of New Haven’s cold cases.
Tamika said over the last 11 years, she lost hope the murder would be solved.
“I been gave up,” she said. “I didn’t think they cared.”
At Friday’s press conference, Chief Frank Limon (pictured) recounted how the cops cracked the case. He stood at a podium flanked by the mayor, police commissioners, FBI agents, and New Haven cops. Over 20 members of the victim’s families, including Tamika, faced him in blue plastic chairs, on either side of rolling TV cameras.
The case was solved due to a “reorganization of investigative services” that began this past October, Limon said. The department established a Cold Case Unit, a joint task force between the FBI and New Haven police.
Under the direction of Lt. John Velleca, police established a system for determining which cold cases still look promising. Velleca examined over 100 cases and put them in order based on their apparent “solvability.” The Winthrop Avenue murders landed at the top of the list.
Lt. Jeff Hoffman said police then began months of re-interviewing witnesses that led to a solid case against a 32-year-old man known as “Mousey.” He’s currently incarcerated in a federal prison in Indiana on gun charges, Hoffman said. Cops are having him extradited back to New Haven and tried for the double murder.
Mousey is currently serving a 21-year sentence, according to the Connecticut U.S. Attorney’s office. He pleaded guilty in August 2005 to charges of being a felon in possession of a handgun and possessing crack. On Christmas Eve, 2004, he shot and wounded someone in Fair Haven, according to court statements and documents. Less than three weeks later, on Jan. 10, 2005, he shot at his girlfriend’s car on George Street. On Jan. 12, 2005, he was arrested at his apartment on George Street and found with a .32-caliber gun and 88 bags of crack. He previously had several felony convictions in state superior court on drug, robbery and conspiracy charges.
Contributed Photo.
Lamont Brockenberry and his mother, Leila.
On Friday, Hoffman and Limon declined to go into the specifics of the double murder case and the evidence against Mousey.
The break in the case came through the work of Officer Mike Mastropetre, a member of the Cold Case Unit.
Here’s what allegedly happened in the murder: Earlier on the day of the shootings, the shooter got into an argument with some people from whom he had borrowed a gun. He allegedly never returned the gun. He came back to the location later on and started shooting.
Police believe that he did not intend to shoot Lamont Brockenberry and Lakeia Vaughn, that the intended target got away.
“These were two innocent victims,” Hoffman said on Friday.
Tamika (pictured) recalled the day her older brother died. “We had just buried our mom,” she said. Their mother, Leila, passed away in March of 2000. Their younger brother had died from asthma complication several years before. All they had left was each other, Tamika said. “It was just me and him.”
On the night of the murder, Lamont stopped by Tamika’s house. That was unusual for him, Tamika said. Lamont told her he loved her. That was the last thing she heard him say, she recalled.
Later that night, Tamika was home with Lamont’s other daughter, Montasia, when the phone rang. It was the police, letting her know Lamont had been killed.
She couldn’t believe it. “He ain’t dead,” she remembers saying. Then she went to the hospital and saw his body.
When she got the call Thursday night, 11 years later, “It stirred up some old things inside of me,” Tamika said.
While it brought up a lot of old wounds, the news of the arrest feels like closure, she said.
Brockenberry left behind two daughters when he died. His 78-year-old grandmother, Ruby Giles, cried softly as she sat in a wheelchair at the press conference.
“He was my sweetest child,” she said.
Seventeen-year-old Manteiya Brockenberry lost her dad when she was 6 years old.
“I’m happy that justice is being served,” she said.