Paul Bass Photo
Early rush-hour stopped in both directions. A disoriented 49-year-old man collapsed in the middle of the street, bathed in blood. Women rushed to his aid. One called for somebody to give her a shirt to help stanch the blood. Another asked the bloodied man if he could remember his name. Someone called for an ambulance.
That was the scene on Goffe Street near the intersection of County Street around 4 p.m. Friday afternoon.
The man in the middle of the street had good reason to be disoriented, based on what police later concluded.
Here’s what happened, according to police spokesman Officer David Hartman:
The 49-year-old man was Brooks MacQuarrie of Wallingford, a service technician at New Haven Power Sports on Whalley Avenue, according to the store’s website. MacQuarrie had finished repairing a “candy-apple” scooter at his shop, then took it for a test drive. On Goffe, according to witnesses, up to a half-dozen teen-aged boys rushed at him, “pushed him from the moving scooter, assaulted him and fled with the scooter, leaving him bleeding in the road.” The above photo shows the scene as women came to his aid.
MacQuarrie “suffered significant fractures to his head, ribs and arm,” according to Hartman. He couldn’t remember much when the cops interviewed him, beyond having been rushed at by the “gang of teens.” He was taken by ambulance for treatment to Yale-New Haven Hospital, where his condition was listed as “guarded but stable.”
Later that night, around 9:40, Officers David Rivera and Jose Miranda spotted the scooter near the Hamden shopping plaza on Dixwell Avenue.
Rivera and Miranda were in an unmarked car. They started following. At first the young men didn’t know they were being followed, according to Sgt. Robert Lawlor Jr., head of the police department’s robbery and burglary unit. When back-up cruisers arrived, the young men figured it out and ditched the scooter behind 31 Orchard Place. They took off, and remain at large, Lawlor said.
Police are looking for the pair and “process[ing] the scooter for forensic evidence.”
Overdose At Modern: Around the same time as the Goffe incident Friday afternoon, a 39-year-old New Haven man died of an apparent heroin overdose in the bathroom of Modern Apizza on State Street, according to Officer Hartman.
A witness had come across his unconscious body as well as a syringe beside him, and informed the owner, who called the cops. Firefighters and ambulance workers showed up too. They tried reviving him with CPR “as he was rushed to the hospital.” It was too late.
Meanwhile, the syringe had disappeared. Cops stopped two of the man’s friends as they tried to leave Modern and learned one of them had taken the man’s syringe, heroin and wallet with him. “He said he wanted to protect [the friend] because he was on probation and didn’t want him to face trouble,” according to Hartman. The man had a syringe and drugs of his own on him, too. Police arrested him.