Paul Bass Photo
Eyewitness Standberry at a vigil Monday night for Marquell Banks.
They were stoned, but they remembered what their friend kept saying: He planned to commit murder. Before the night ended, they saw their 13-year-old buddy Marquell “Quelly” Banks lying on the floor with a fatal gunshot to his head.
That’s Chris Standberry’s and Mike Newsome’s story about how they came to witness a murder that has ruptured the hearts of New Haven.
At least that’s the story they told the Independent. They told it Monday night, 25 hours after the homicide, as a crowd of 75 friends and relatives dispersed from a candlelight vigil for Quelly at the corner of Porter Street and Parmelee Avenue in the West River neighborhood, where the fatal shooting took place.
They told a similar story to the police. Based on their story, police Monday arrested the two men’s friend, an 18-year-old New Havener. They charged him with murdering Quelly.
The two eyewitnesses said that while their friend was clear about his intent to kill, they believe he didn’t intend to kill Quelly.
Family Photo
Marquell “Quelly” Banks.
Standberry and Newsome were friends with Quelly. They came from different neighborhoods: Standberry from the Farnam Courts projects off Grand Avenue, Quelly from Fair Haven, Newsome from the house at Porter and Parmalee. They hung out together with a bunch of other kids on Munson Street in the Dixwell neighborhood.
Quelly was considerably younger than Standberry, who’s 18, and Newsome, who’s 17. “He looked up to me and Mike,” said Standberry.
The three drove around Sunday afternoon, smoking marijuana, according to Standberry. At some point they picked up their friend. The friend had not gotten high with them, Standberry said.
He was talking crazy.
“All day he was saying, ‘I’m gonna kill somebody,’” Standberry said. He didn’t name a target.
They eventually ended up at Newsome’s house at Porter Street, a quiet pocket of West River hard off the MLK Boulevard that bisected and eviscerated part of the neighborhood during the urban renewal era a half-century ago.
They were inside a small one-story addition to the main house. According to Standberry, the group decided to “call some females.” Standberry has a cell phone that receives calls and texts, but the only number he can call out is 911. Newsome went toward the main house to retrieve a phone.
He was on a step connecting the two edifices when a shot rang out.
Neither said he saw the shot fired. They claimed they didn’t know the friend had had a gun.
They said they did see their friend run out, then run back in. They said their friend told them, “I shot little bro.” Then the friend fled again.
And then they saw Quelly lying on the ground.
He’d been shot at close range in the head with a sawed-off shotgun.
Standberry called 911. It was around 7:30 p.m.
Until help arrived, he stayed by Quelly’s body. “I was trying to keep him alive,” he said. “I didn’t let my eyes off him.”
When fire department medics and cops arrived, Standberry stepped aside and watched. They took Quelly to Yale-New Haven Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The police took Standberry and Newsome to headquarters for questioning. They told their story, but, Standberry said, he acted out. “I was rough. I couldn’t take it. I never witnesses anything like [what happened] with Little Bro.”
Standberry had left his cell phone at the crime scene, which had been sealed. Only the next day, Monday, when he retrieved it, did he find text messages from the friend. The messages (pictured) had come the night before. The friend was expressing remorse and considering coming down to the police station, according to Standberry.
The friend did not go to the station overnight. The police went to his last known address, on Lodge Street, around 3 a.m.; he wasn’t there. He did show up at 10:45 a.m. to turn himself in. He came with his mother.
For those reasons, Standberry insisted Monday night, he believes the shooting was accidental. Yes, the friend talked about killing someone. But “somebody that did murder wouldn’t turn himself in.” Newsome corroborated Standberry’s versions of events and made the same argument: It was accidental.
By the time they obtained a warrant for the friend’s arrest, police concluded it was an intentional homicide.
Vigil Starts Out Tense
Intentional or not, the homicide, New Haven’s 28th of the year, hit Quelly’s friends hard. Especially the two friends who watched him die.
So Standberry and Newsome decided to bring people together, fast, to pay tribute to Quelly. They went on Facebook. They went on TV. They said: Come to the Porter Street house at 8 p.m. Monday.
Word spread fast; Quelly was a popular kid, loved for his sense of humor, his friendly demeanor, his passion for basketball. (Click on the play arrow to watch a video shot by Quelly’s coach, Frank Redente Jr., of a dramatic basket he made right before the half-time buzzer during a summer-league basketball game in Virginia this summer. Read more about that in this story.)
Some 75 people arrived at the Porter Street vigil at 8 p.m. Many brought candles. Many brought tears.At first, the scene was tense: Quellly’s relatives confronted Standberry and Newsome. Quelly’s relatives said the two men were showing videos of Quelly and acting disrespectful. Standberry’s mother, Crystal Brown, said some of Quelly’s male relatives were “threatening” her son and Newsome. She called the police to report the “threatening” incident.
Some of Quelly’s female relatives stepped between the men and calmed the situation, she said.
By the time the police arrived, all was peaceful.
So the top cop on the scene, night-shift patrol supervisor Sgt. David Guliuzza, kept his half-dozen men at a distance from the crowd, stationed across the street.
“This is not the time for throwing our weight around. It is not an explosive situation,” Guliuzza (pictured above) said, sitting in his car as mourners lit candles, hugged, cried out by the entrance to the apartment where the shooting occurred.
“It’s not even noisy. As long as everybody’s calm, you let it go. We take a step back and we watch.” He did plan to keep an officer stationed on the block overnight to maintain calm.
“As long as the law be around, it’ll be all right,” agreed Quelly’s great uncle, who was standing nearby.
Overall, though, “this won’t be the end of it,” he predicted, referring to the tendency of shootings in New Haven to spawn retribution.
Across the street, Ganazhia Bennett cried and hugged her friends (pictured). She found out about the vigil via Facebook. She said knew Quelly from hanging out on Munson Street.
She was asked what she will remember most about him.
“The way he asked me for a kiss,” she said. “He liked me.”
By the door to the apartment, friends arranged tea lights to form Quelly’s initials, MB.
Behind the tea lights were arrayed taller votive candles, some with the visages of saints.
“I don’t feel it was an accident,” said a step-aunt, Aushanti Roberts. “It was intentional,” based, she said, “on the type of gun.”
Quelly’s mom spent some time at the vigil, then left. Her sister, Bridgette Roberts (at right in photo), stayed behind.
So did her pastor, Thomas Mills, Jr.
The pastor stepped in front of the tea lights and addressed those assembled. He recited portions of the 27th Psalm. (”The Lord is my light and my salvation/ Whom shall I fear?/ The Lord is the strength of my life/ Of whom shall I be afraid?/ When evil men advance against me to devour my flesh, when my enemies and my foes attack me/ They will stumble and fall.”) Then the pastor prayed “for healing in this community.”
Afterwards, eyewitness Newsome was asked why his friend had kept talking about killing someone Sunday.
“Honestly,” he responded, “I don’t know what was going through his head.”