"Mega" site where trap was laid.
The “Sugar Daddy” showed up as promised, but with a silver handgun.
“This is not what you think it is,” he informed his online-rendezvous partner. “This is a stick-up.”
So began an arranged encounter in Newhallville early Sunday. It ended with a shooting.
Three days later, thanks in part to a dropped cellphone, the police tracked down the alleged shooter, and he’s now behind bars.
Here’s what happened, according to an arrest warrant affidavit written by Bleck Joseph, the New Haven detective who investigated the case.
A woman who lives on Read Street arranged through a site called MegaPersonals.com to meet with a 35-year-old Deep River man named Sebastian.
The woman later told police “this was the first time she used the site in order to attract a ‘Sugar Daddy.’”
The woman and Sebastian agreed to meet at her apartment “for a fee.”
He texted her around 11:45 p.m. to tell her the cops had stopped him. He showed up Sunday at 12:20 a.m. He came into the home “and they proceeded to her bedroom.” The woman noted along the way that he had the silver handgun.
After he entered the bedroom he told her he had actually come for a stick-up, not a paid sexual encounter.
The woman started screaming and fighting with Sebastian for the gun. Her male partner heard her from another bedroom. He “came to her aid, and the fight continued in the small hallways between the kitchen and the bedroom,” Detective Joseph wrote.
Sebastian allegedly fired two bullets. He hit the woman’s male partner in the abdomen. Sebastian fled the scene — without grabbing his cellphone.
The woman called 911. Officers came, as did emergency medics. The male partner was taken to the hospital for emergency surgery; he was later listed in stable condition.
The woman showed officers video camera footage of Sebastian walking into the home, then fleeing.
She led them to the phone, which she had placed on a bed. Officers also collected two fired 9mm cartridge casings and one bullet.
Joseph traced the phone to Sebastian, whose picture was in a state corrections database due to previous convictions for first-degree assault and conspiracy to commit robbery. (He served eight years of 12-year sentence on those charges before being released on parole several years ago.) His picture matched the image of the man in the surveillance video.
The state police confirmed they’d stopped Sebastian around 11:45 p.m. Saturday because he was asleep in his car on the shoulder of the Wilbur Cross Parkway. A trooper confirmed Sebastian was the same guy pictured in the Newhallville surveillance video.
The woman also picked out Sebastian’s photo from an array of eight “similar looking” men, according to the police report.
“He was in my face,” the report quoted her as saying, “so I know exactly what he looks like.”
Police obtained a warrant to arrest Sebastian — which they subsequently did, without incident — on charges of first-degree assault, criminal attempt to commit robbery, criminal possession of a pistol, and carrying a pistol without a permit. He appeared in state Superior Court Thursday, where he was arraigned and ordered to be held o $500,000 bail. He is next scheduled to appear in court Feb. 28.
Police chief Karl Jacobson praised the detectives’ swift work on the case, making an arrest within three days of the shooting.
“Despite our reduced staffing levels, we are still working to reduce violent crime in our city and bring those responsible to justice,” he said.
Paul Bass Photo
Detective Bleck Joseph, who cracked the case.