David Yaffe-Bellany Photo
Willis and Fitzpatrick at Thursday night’s meeting.
Instead of preparing for a new school year, 17-year-old Aymir Holland is preparing for a trial that could send him to prison for up to 61 years. Community members Thursday night rallied around to help him.
Last November, when he was 16, Holland was one of three young men arrested for allegedly assaulting a celebrated 79-year-old Yale professor as he walked home from work. Holland was charged with five felonies. He remains behind bars.
His mother, Latoya Willis, insisted at a meeting at the main public library branch Thursday night of the Citywide Youth Coalition that her son deserves to go free. She said he merely watched, frozen with panic, as the two other young men assaulted the professor. Local activists from across the city promised they will wage a campaign to secure Holland’s freedom.
Castillo: “We’re not done.”
“When you hear ‘61 years,’ what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Life sentence,” said Addys Castillo, the executive director of the Citywide Youth Coalition. “We’re not done. This is only the beginning of the public conversation.”
On the evening of Nov. 27th, 2015, Willis said, she sent Holland out of the house to play basketball, hoping it would cheer him up after a funeral earlier in the day for a friend of his who had recently died of cancer.
Holland went downtown to meet with another friend, who was accompanied by a group of men he barely knew, according to Willis. At around 6 p.m., near the corner of Whitney Avenue and Bradley Street, two of the men attacked the professor, punching and kicking him until he blacked out, then stealing his wallet and backpack. The professor — who served in the U.S. State Department under President Ronald Reagan administration and now teaches popular international relations classes at Yale — suffered three broken ribs and later underwent surgery on a broken bone in his right knee.
According to Willis, Holland, a large, likable kid, stood speechless and terrified as the attack unfolded.
“By the time he ran, they were all running together,” Willis said. “My son’s never even been suspended from school, and now he’s looking at 61 years.”
An arrest warrant affidavit signed by New Haven police Det. Juan Ingles tells a different story. According to the affidavit, although the professor told the police he did not know how many of the men attacked him, one of the other alleged assailants said Holland stomped on the professor while he lay on the ground. The third alleged assailant told police he wasn’t sure whether Holland had struck the professor. Another two men said to be involved in the assault ran away from the scene and have not been identified by the police.
The professor was treated at the hospital for injuries, from which he recovered. The arrestees were each charged with five felonies: first-degree assault, first-degree assault on an elderly person, first-degree robbery, second-degree larceny, reckless endangerment, and conspiracy.
In December, Holland was sent to the Manson Youth Institution in Cheshire, where he has been held for the last seven months, with bail set at $250,000. Willis, who said she can’t afford a private attorney, has relied on the services of a public defender, Angelica Papastravros.
Holland is scheduled to appear in New Haven Superior Court on Aug. 25 for a pre-trial hearing. Despite his age, he is set to be tried as an adult, given the severity of the charges against him. Willis said she hopes to convince the judge to transfer Holland to juvenile court.
At Thursday night’s meeting, Castillo and other local activists brainstormed strategies for mobilizing community members to support Holland and his family: a petition, rallies outside the courthouse, a GoFundMe page to raise money to pay bail.
Mark Fitzpatrick, an English teacher who taught Holland at Highville Change Academy, spoke at the meeting, urging the local activists to rally behind his former student. He said he tries to visit Holland at Manson Correctional Institution about once a week.
“It’s a hard thing seeing him behind this plexiglass, when you’re used to seeing him in class,” Fitzpatrick told the Independent. “He was a big kid — and he’s just so gentle. He has stopped a couple kids in school from bullying other kids.”
Willis — who spoke through tears in front of an audience of about three dozen people at the library — said Holland studied Mandarin at Highville and hoped someday to travel to China.
“I didn’t consider my son ‘at risk,’” Willis said. “The type of person he is, I wouldn’t have expected to be sitting in this room.”