Neighbors like Rahul Gandhi helped, after an early-evening attack at Alden and West Elm.
The attack took place around 6:30 p.m. Saturday.
A woman had just bought candy at Westville Quality Market, the store Gandhi runs at the Alden-West Elm corner. She stepped outside. Two 16-year-old boys approached her, flashed a gun, grabbed her purse.
The woman noticed the gun was a b.b. She fought back; a struggle ensued. After firing two shots, the boys fled.
The woman ran back into the store, hysterical. “She was shaking, man,” Gandhi, who’s 32, said a half-hour later. “She was crying. She said, ‘I got robbed! They had a gun!’ They punched her face.”
Her face was bleeding. Gandhi calmed her down.
Meanwhile, a neighbor had called in to the cops to report the presence of two suspicious looking people in the area. Sgt. Tony Reyes, who was in charge of patrolling the west side of town Saturday night, arrived within minutes. Gandhi saw his car. He rushed out of the store and reported the attack on the woman.
What luck — another neighbor walking by said she’d just seen two boys run through backyards in the interior of the block.
Reyes put out the call. Cops driving five separate cruisers rushed to help him seal off the block.
Around the corner on one-block Burton Street, Reyes noticed movement in a yard. He walked into the yard, drew his gun. He found the two teens hiding.
“Let me see your hands!” he called. “Go to the ground.” They obeyed and were arrested without a struggle.
As cops placed the witnesses and suspects in separate cars, another neighbor, David Chorney of Burton Street, approached one of the officers to report a burglary. On Friday night, he said, he walked into his garage to find it “much cleaner than it was.” Stuff was missing, including his wife’s and daughter’s bicycles. An officer took the information; Chorney said he hoped the captured suspects might be the ones with his family’s bikes.
Sgt. Reyes reported later that evening that the attack victim was in good condition. She didn’t need to be hospitalized.
Police charged the two boys, who live outside the neighborhood but in New Haven, with a series of assault and attempted robbery charges.