Rahul Gandhi saw two teens with masks outside his store — and called the cops.
At the time, Gandhi happened to have a print-out of a New Haven Independent story on the counter of his Alden Avenue store, Westville Quality Market. The story was about how two teens with ski masks had held up three people at gunpoint two nights earlier just around the corner on Burton Street.
So when a woman came in and warned him about the loitering teens — “Be careful,” she said; “there are two kids behind the store” looking suspicious” — Gandhi went out to look. The two teens, wearing dark clothes and masks and hanging by the corner, did look suspicious. Gandhi returned to the counter and made the call.
It was Monday around 5:50 p.m.
The police showed up almost immediately. The kids ran, one into a yard on West Elm Street in Westville.
Several cops gave chase, including including Officer Robert Hayden (pictured).
One of the suspects emerged and “took a combative position” with Hayden, according to police spokesman Officer Joe Avery.
Hayden apprehended the suspect, who is 17 years old and lives on Glenview Terrace.
The other suspect made over a fence to a backyard on Burton Street.
Officer John Lalli found him lying on top of a bag containing a BB pistol that “looked like a real gun,” according to Avery. The suspect, who’s 16, lives in the neighborhood, on nearby Willard Street.
Possible Link Explored
The suspects were held separately in cruisers on Burton (pictured) and West Elm. They were interviewed at the police station. The police wondered what Rahul Gandhi wondered: were these the same two teens who committed the Saturday night hold-up?
There were similarities. Both incidents occurred soon after nightfall, on the same block. The suspects were around the same age. They wore dark clothes and masks. They carried a gun, or what looked like a gun.
But there were differences in the two incidents, the cops learned. The teens in the first incident traveled on bikes. The police were unable to find any bikes in the vicinity of Monday night’s arrests.
Then the cops learned something else: The teens arrested Monday night were in jail Saturday night, arrested a day earlier after being involved in a fight. That meant they couldn’t have been the same people who committed the Saturday night mugging. That meant at least two pairs of mask-clad, gun-toting teens were up to something on that block.
(Two teens in dark clothes were involved in a third incident in the vicinity, at 3:19 p.m. Monday. According to Officer Avery, a person on Yale Avenue saw a teenager breaking into the garage and leaving with a bicycle. The resident chased the teen, who dropped the bike, and fled along with an accomplice who’d been serving as a look-out. The two were described as between 15 and 18 years old. No arrests were made.)
Police charged the teens arrested Monday evening with trespassing, interfering with and officer, an, in the case of the 16-year-old, carrying a weapon. Then they were released. Avery said that under a new state law, the cops can’t release the names of 16 and 17-year-old arrestees, and it’s harder to keep them in custody on minor charges.
Storeowner Gandhi has become accustomed to keeping an eye for trouble on his block. Last November, for instance, he was one of the neighbors who helped a woman who was attacked outside the store by two 16 year-old boys flashing a gun; the cops caught the kids.