Paul Bass Photo
Tiffany Dozier ran into her “first love” for the first time in four years. He promised to call her that night. Dozier never got that call. She got a different one the next morning — that he’d been shot dead at the Church Street South housing project.
Dozier (pictured) rushed to the scene Tuesday morning after getting the call at her job at the Hospital of St. Raphael.
She arrived to find a section blocked off at the housing complex across from the train station. Police were busy investigating the shooting of Dozier’s friend, 27-year-old Troy Perry. He’s New Haven’s 13th homicide victim of the year.
Someone called the cops at 4:37 a.m. to report gunshots. The cops arrived to find Perry, who died from a gunshot wound.
Lt. Lisa Dadio said mid-day Tuesday that police don’t have much information to release yet. They have no suspects, she said. There’s no word on the number of shots fired or the motive or other circumstances surrounding the shooting. The autopsy hadn’t yet been done. The major crimes unit was the scene investigating. No one else was hurt, Dadio said.
She said she’s not sure where Troy Perry lived. “We have a bunch of different addresses,” she said.
Perry did not live at Church Street South, according to Dozier. She got the impression that he may not have had a permanent, stable home.
She said she and Perry grew up in New Haven. She now lives in Hamden.
“He was my first love,” she said. “We were teenagers at the time.”
She hadn’t seen him for four years. Then she ran into him on Monday afternoon. He said he’d just been in a car accident; he was on the way to the chiropractor.
“You look good,” she told him. He told her he had “nowhere to go.” He promised to to call her that evening.
“He’s a people person,” Dozier said, fighting back tears. “He had a nice heart. He kept to himself.”
A man standing next to her, who identified himself as “Doug,” said he, too, knew Perry.
“We all go through ups and downs. Yesterday I gave him something to eat,” Doug said. “He was a good person. The first thing everyone assumes when someone gets shot — he’s a bad person. Don’t judge a book by its cover.”