Thomas Breen photos
Capt. Anthony Duff hand in hand with his wife Mia. Below: Officers salute the captain upon his hospital release.
Hundreds of police officers thronged the driveway to the Yale New Haven Hospital to give a hero’s salute to Capt. Anthony Duff upon his release 10 days after he was shot and injured in Dixwell.
By 11 a.m. Thursday , the intersection of Cedar Street and York Street at the heart of the city’s medical district was closed to through traffic and packed with uniformed officers: from the New Haven and North Haven and Branford police departments, from the state police and from the FBI, to name a few.
As the heat and humidity continued to climb, they stood amidst nurses in scrubs, medical students on their lunch breaks, passerby stopping to pay their respect, and representatives from nearly every city department.
The officers created a two-sided aisle a hundred people long stretching from the hospital’s exit to a black SUV at York and Cedar.
All were there to show their support for Duff, who was shot and injured the night of Aug. 12 when, while he was off duty, he witnessed a murder, pursued the assailant, and wound up nearly killed himself.
The four officers first to arrive at the scene that night, Sgts. Chris Cameron and Shayna Kendall and Officers Ramonel Torres and Joseph Perrotti, saved Duff’s life by applying two tourniquets and carrying him to an ambulance, which ferried him to the YNHH emergency room for surgery.
The officers were not able to save the life of Troy Clark, a 46-year-old West Haven man who was shot and killed during the encounter. Police are still looking for the suspect who shot and killed Clark and shot and injured Duff.
Just after 11:30 a.m. Thursday, as officers handed out water bottles to their colleagues waiting in the sun, Sgt. Derek Werner (pictured) emerged from the hospital building to give the waiting crowd a five-minute warning.
Soon thereafter, Werner gave the officers lined up outside the hospital doors another order. It consisted of two sentences, one word each. “Present! Arms!”
The officers raised their hands to their brows in salute.
And then Duff, hand in hand with his wife Mia and backed by the four officers who saved his life last Monday night, walked out of the hospital and down the aisle.
The officers stood silent as they saluted. Onlookers and reporters behind them raised their cameras to photograph Duff as he walked, surveying the audience that had come out in the high summer heat to greet him.
A woman’s voice crackled to life over a loudspeaker.
“You are a true hero to all who know you,” the voice said. “Thank you for your extraordinary service, and we are all wishing you a healthy and a speedy recovery.”
When the voice stopped, the crowd burst into applause.
At the end of the aisle, Kendall helped Duff and his wife get into the SUV as Police Chief Otoniel Reyes climbed into the driver’s seat.
A police motorcade escort flashed its lights and turned on its sirens to clear the way for the captain’s car.
Before he left down York Street, Duff rolled down the car window, and a grateful smile crossed his lips as he took one more look out at the hundreds of men and women there cheering him on. Then the motorcade took him home to Westville.
“Today is a day for all New Haven to rejoice,” Mayor Toni Harp is quoted as saying in an emailed press release sent out by her office Thursday afternoon. “Captain Duff is home again while his remarkable recuperation from traumatic gunshot wounds continues. Today is also a day for all New Haven to feel gratitude for the selfless valor of Captain Duff, and the responsibility every police officer takes on at the start of each shift.
“Outside the hospital today the remarkable demonstration of unity and respect by scores of uniformed officers, from a spectrum of law enforcement agencies, highlights an irrefutable sense of optimism in New Haven, and certainly Captain Duff’s recovery and discharge provide additional evidence of it.”
Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch Duff leaving the hospital.