Thomas Breen photo
Lt. Pedro Colon (right), with Shamar Gibson's brother James Lamar Jackson, at Thursday's presser.
A dispute between a 26-year-old New Havener and his ex-girlfriend’s uncle led to a fatal afternoon stabbing on Orchard Street — and, two months later, to the fourth homicide arrest out of eight murders so far this year.
That 26-year-old New Havener, Shamar Gibson, was stabbed and killed on Saturday, July 6, at around 2:12 p.m. on the sidewalk of Orchard Street near Henry Street.
At a Thursday morning press conference at 1 Union Ave., Police Chief Karl Jacobson, Lt. Pedro Colon, and a handful of fellow officers and detectives stood alongside a dozen of Gibson’s family members and friends to announce the arrest of the man police have accused of killing Gibson, a 36-year-old New Havener named Thomas Norfleet.
Colon and Jacobson said that Norfleet was detained in late July on a parole violation, then was arrested and charged on Aug. 2 for murdering Gibson. He hasn’t yet entered a plea to the felony murder charge, and is currently being held on a $1.5 million bond.
The 14-page arrest warrant affidavit in Norfleet’s case, written on July 31 by New Haven Police Department (NHPD) Det. Carmelo Rivera, details the video surveillance, license plate tracking, and witness interviews that led to Norfleet’s arrest.
Included in that detailing of the investigation is a writeup about an interview Rivera and Det. Martin Podsiad did with Norfleet on July 11 at the parole office at 920 Grand Ave.
During that interview, Norfleet at first told detectives he couldn’t remember what he did on Saturday, July 6. He said he wasn’t working that day at his job as a Lyft driver. He then said he had been hanging out with some friends, but didn’t want to name them “due to the fact it could cause a parole violation.”
Police then showed him a photo of a man pictured on Orchard Street the day of the fatal stabbing, and Norfleet identified himself as that man. He said he had been going to visit his niece.
He then told police he had left the area after visiting his niece. But, upon further questioning and the presentation of camera footage showing otherwise, Norfleet reportedly told the detectives, “Fuck it. Give me a second. I already know. Leave my niece out of this.” He spoke about problems Gibson and his niece had been having, and acknowledged that he and Gibson were going to fight that day.
Norfleet claimed Gibson “ran” towards him, and he responded by swinging at him.
“I fucking forgot I had a knife in my fucking hand so yeah I stabbed him,” Norfleet confessed. He said he thought he had stabbed Gibson twice.
During Thursday’s press conference, Colon said that Gibson had tried to get around Norfleet, and that Norfleet then stabbed him “repeatedly.”
Gibson’s brother, James Lamar Jackson, spoke up on behalf of the family at Thursday’s presser. “He was always funny, always making everyone laugh,” Jackson said about his late brother. He said Gibson will live on through the memories and love of his family members.
Jacobson commended the family members for coming out to Thursday’s press conference. “We hate to do this too much,” he said about murder-related press conferences.
He also lauded city police officers for “working extremely hard” while “short-handed, understaffed,” to make arrests like these.
He said that there have been eight homicides so far this year, compared to 17 at this time last year. He also said that four of those eight homicides have been “closed” — that is, arrests have been made, and another two are close to resulting in arrests.
The city’s latest weekly CompStat report, which runs through the week ending Aug. 26, states that there have been 60 people shot so far this year, compared to 49 at this time last year, an increase of 22 percent. There have also been 116 confirmed gunshots fired so far this year, compared to 195 at this time last year, a 40 percent drop.