Thomas Breen photo
Church St. near Crown, hours after the Nov. 1 shooting.
Police officers who responded to a 2 a.m. shootout on Church Street last Friday found a “very chaotic” scene — with a young woman lying on the sidewalk bleeding from the head, a second gunshot victim standing alongside her, a gun in the middle of the road, car traffic still flowing, a third gunshot victim a block away, and video recordings showing one man firing into a crowd of people, prompting another to return shots with a weapon of his own.
That’s according to 26 pages’ worth of officer reports and other arrest documents filed by the New Haven Police Department (NHPD) in the criminal court case for a 21-year-old Hamden man.
City police arrested that man following the early morning Nov. 1 gunfire downtown on Church Street that injured four people between the ages of 19 and 22, including the arrestee.
The Hamden man has been charged with one felony count of carrying a pistol without a permit, and is currently being held on a $500,000 bond.
A press release sent out by city police spokesperson Officer Christian Bruckhart on Tuesday said that the second man injured in the Nov. 1 shooting, a 19-year-old from New Haven, “is still undergoing treatment at the hospital.” His charges and bond will be the same as the 21-year-old Hamden man’s, “however he has not been processed on the arrest warrant yet.”
The investigation is ongoing, Bruckhart concluded, “and additional charges may be pending.”
Two other people — a 22-year-old woman from Hamden and a 19-year-old woman from West Haven — were also injured in the shooting.
Police believe the people involved and caught up in the Nov. 1 shooting had been coming from the downtown bar area by Crown Street, according to Police Chief Karl Jacobson. He said police haven’t yet confirmed which place or places they had come from.
According to the police reports, officers responded to the area of 55 Church St. just after 2 a.m. in response to 911 calls about a person shot, as well as a ShotSpotter alert of five rounds fired.
Officer David Derubeis wrote that he found a woman “laying on the sidewalk” and “bleeding from the back of her head.”
The 21-year-old Hamden man, who would later be arrested, was also on scene, and had been shot in the abdomen. He reportedly was one of the people to call 911 to alert police that the woman had been shot.
Both would be transported by ambulance to the hospital.
Two people alerted another officer on scene, Christian Bruckhart, that a gun was in the middle of the street.
“The scene was very chaotic and vehicles were still driving through the area,” Bruckhart wrote in a supplemental report, “so I remained standing over the gun without touching it until” Sgt. Michael Daniele retrieved the gun while wearing gloves.
“Due to the large amount of people in the area and traffic actively driving on Church Street near the firearm, I determined to retrieve the firearm before it was picked up by a bystander or ran over by a vehicle,” Daniele wrote in his own supplemental report.
Officers who canvassed the crime scene found a GMC with New Jersey plates parked across from 55 Church and struck by gunfire. Two windows at the nearby Armed Forces Career Center were also struck by gunfire.
A city camera at Church and Crown captured the incident.
“It showed a large group of people standing in the area of 55 Church Street,” Derubeis wrote. An unidentified man is seen walking on the sidewalk near 55 Church.
According to a supplemental report filed by Officer Ryan Loschiavo, per the video footage, that man “appears to confront” the crowd and appears to fire into the crowd.
“A muzzle flash is seen in the video footage from the hand of the unidentified male,” Derubeis wrote. The apparent shooter then runs north across Church, falls, gets back up, runs, falls again, and “a black object falls” in the middle of the road. That’s where police would later find a gun.
Police soon found that alleged shooter suffering from gunshot wounds near Temple and Crown, and later identified him as the 19-year-old from New Haven.
Still a fourth gunshot victim would arrive by private vehicle at Yale New Haven Hospital later in the night.
Another supplemental report, written by Officer Kyle Listro, describes still another video recording of the incident.
That too shows a man, believed to be the 19-year-old from New Haven, confronting and appearing to fire multiple shots into the crowd outside 55 Church.
As the 19-year-old from West Haven fell to the ground injured, the 21-year-old from Hamden appeared to return fire from his own gun. The latter “drew his own firearm from his waist area and appeared to be returning fire” towards the two others who were ultimately injured.
The 21-year-old Hamden man did not have a Connecticut Pistol Permit, and so police subsequently arrested him on the carrying a pistol without a permit felony.