In the wake of a horrific attack on a prostitute in a cemetery across the street from their homes, Bright Street neighbors and a Fair Haven developer got into a front-stoop debate Thursday about how to make their block safer.
The attack took place Thursday morning.
A 39-year-old prostitute from Hamden was beaten and stabbed in a Fair Haven cemetery, according to police. The woman was found stabbed in the neck and partially naked at the Union Cemetery on Bright Street at 10:36 a.m. She was taken to Yale-New Haven Hospital, given surgery, and remained in stable condition Thursday afternoon. Police were awaiting her recovery to interview her.
A law-enforcement employee familiar with the case said the woman was a prostitute, but police believed the case had to do with a former boyfriend. The victim had told police in the past that her boyfriend wanted to kill her.
Police trolled Union Cemetery Thursday, looking for clues surrounding the mausoleum where she was attacked. By early afternoon, police hadn’t caught the atttacker, rumored to be a white guy in a white T‑shirt. Onlooking neighbors’ jitters turned to resolve to use this as a reason to get serious about safety.
As neighbors sat on Bright Street porches and chatted about the commotion, and news vans lined up along the cemetery perimeter, a local developer strode by.
Angelo Reyes, a diehard Fair Havener devoted to cleaning up Grand Avenue, approached a fast-walking TV newscaster: “Hey, I have a problem with this.” All this media coverage is killing us, he said. It gives the area a bad reputation.
“It’s generally a quiet street,” agreed one longtime former resident, Katherine Mauriello (pictured at right), who was paying a visit to friends on a Bright Street porch. The cemetery is patrolled day and night by guards, so the incident is “odd,” she said.
Heather MacLeod (pictured in back), who lives at that house, said she’d been there 13 years. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Reyes strode up to the group after the TV newsman drove away. “You gotta take care of this!” he told the neighbors.
MacLeod said neighbors are making an effort: When she saw a prostitute and two men behind the boarded-up house next door, Mauriellos’ mother marched behind the long-abandoned house and told the group to leave. They did.
You have to keep it up —‚Äù start a block watch, Reyes urged. He’s sorry that when he cleans up one area, crime shifts to another part of town. “We have to work together.”
The woman seemed puzzled at Reyes’ insistence.
“Are you an alderman?” asked one woman.
“No, I just love my neighborhood,” said Reyes.
Neighbors said they’d tried to set up a block watch before. There are a few households who cooperate (all were out on their stoops Thursday), but there’s not enough momentum for a block watch, they said. “We’ve asked people and they don’t want to be bothered,” said Mauriello.
“A lot of them don’t like to talk,” added MacLeod.
“There are no excuses,” said Reyes. You have to band together and make it work. Sometimes you have to take matters in your own hands: In his stretch of nearby Grand Avenue, he doesn’t tolerate strangers who bring drugs and prostitution from suburbs to his ‘hood. They get beat up. Or Reyes follows them in his car with bright headbeams on. Then they get the picture: They’re not wanted in this neighborhood.
“I’m a Christian, I can’t do that,” responded one woman to the suggestion of violence. After Reyes left, neighbors discussed further. Maybe Reyes can pull those moves on criminals in the middle of the night. “I’m a woman,” said Tina Garrett, “That’s dangerous.”