Thomas Breen photos
Heriberto Cotto's sister, Yarisbeth: "God sees everything."
Cotto, a car club enthusiast who was shot and killed during a Christmas Eve fight.
City police have secured a warrant for the arrest of a 32-year-old New Havener who allegedly killed a man in the Dwight neighborhood — before fleeing to Pennsylvania to attempt to kill someone else.
Police Chief Karl Jacobson, Asst. Police Chief David Zannelli, Mayor Justin Elicker, and a host of city police officers and detectives shared those details midday Wednesday during a press conference about the Dec. 24, 2024, shooting death of 43-year-old New Havener Heriberto Cotto.
Standing alongside Cotto’s sister, Yarisbeth, and his daughter, Lizmary, Zannelli said that city police responded at around 8:08 p.m. last Christmas Eve to multiple 911 calls reporting a person shot in the area of Edgewood Avenue and Beers Street.
Upon arrival, police found Cotto unresponsive and suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.
“Officers located ballistic evidence in the street, along with the victim’s car,” according to a press release sent out by city police spokesperson Officer Christian Bruckhart. “Detectives responded and were able to determine that [Cotto] arrived in the area just prior to the incident and was involved in an argument with another individual before being shot.”
At Wednesday’s presser, Jacobson said the suspect — who had been convicted of a felony and was on probation at the time — wound up crashing his car and fleeing the scene soon after the Dec. 24 shooting death. He said that that man, a 32-year-old New Havener, was arrested roughly a week later by Pennsylvania state police on charges of attempted murder involving the same gun he allegedly used in Cotto’s shooting death in New Haven.
Zannelli said that New Haven police Det. John Truhart obtained a murder arrest warrant, with a $3 million bond, for the suspect on March 13. The suspect is currently detained in Pennsylvania on the separate attempted murder charges; city police are working with Pennsylvania state police to extradite him back to Connecticut so he can be arraigned on charges of murder for Cotto’s death, criminal possession of a firearm, and carrying a pistol without a permit.
“Nobody has the right to take somebody’s life,” Cotto’s sister, Yarisbeth, said at Wednesday’s press conference as she thanked police for finding her brother’s alleged killer.
She said her brother, known to friends as “Balita,” was kind, loved cars, and was part of a local “car club.” She and Cotto’s daughter stood beneath a screen at police headquarters that showed a slideshow of photos of Cotto posing with family, friends, and trophies from car club competitions.
Various contemporaneous news reports from local news outlets in Pennsylvania, meanwhile, shed light on what Cotto’s alleged killer was arrested for after he fled New Haven.
One such report, from Dec. 31 by an ABC affiliate called WNEP, described the 32-year-old man as a “reputed heroin dealer” who led Pennsylvania state police “on a two-county chase” that included “gunfire, a home invasion, a carjacking, and, in the end, a set of handcuffs.” Another report from Dec. 31, by the Times Leader of Wilkes-Barre, Penn., states that the suspect, while fleeing police by traveling east in the westbound lanes of Interstate 80, struck another vehicle, and abandoned his stolen car. He then “walked toward a stopped vehicle and fired two shots at the driver,” before running into a wooded area and breaking into a home.
Connecticut state court records show that the 32-year-old suspect has a handful of felony and misdemeanor convictions dating back to 2016, including for charges of third-degree burglary, first-degree larceny, first-degree criminal trespass, and second-degree assault.
Asst. Chief Zannelli.