New Haven Independent

Cat House Emptied; Bullets Fly Between Cars

by Melissa Bailey | July 11, 2006 8:42 PM | Permalink

Cat Lair

‘What’s that smell?’ Asked neighbors of a house on East Shore’s Girard Avenue when a window was flung open one recent day. Alderwoman Arlene DePino summoned LCI and went down for a look. No one was home. When they peered through a window, they found the floors thick with garbage, cat litter and 50 roaming cats.

“There wasn’t an inch of floor space,” recalled DePino Tuesday, as police and LCI reps went back to the house with a warrant and evacuated the cats. One room lay filled with cat food, tins piled up to the knees, she said. “There was so much garbage, you could not walk!” Police and safety officials began emptying the house of cats around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, said DePino, who spent most of her day at the house. She said the woman who lived there was grateful that help had come. …

Shootout

Middletown Avenue erupted in gunfire Monday evening as shots flew between two parties in silver cars, say police. Parties inside two cars fired 20 rounds of bullets at each other near Middletown Avenue and Rte. 80 at about 7:39 p.m. Both cars were severely damaged. One, a Dodge Neon, rolled away from the scene with a pierced gas tank until the driver ditched it in a driveway at 1243 State St. From there, two passengers took off on the highway in a backup car that apparently had been near the shooting scene.

Two others fled on foot to Nash and Mechanic Streets, where they called for a taxi. Police, hot on the fugitives’ trail, called the taxi company and met the passengers at their destination: 138 Carlile St. in the Hill neighborhood. There they found a 31 year-old man whose mother owns the newly bullet-ridden Dodge. Police couldn’t yet make a case that those two men had been involved in the shootout, but a search warrant yeilded something else: Several bags of crystal meth and a bundle of crack cocaine. Police Tuesday were putting together an arrest warrant for drug possession, said Police Spokeswoman Bonnie Winchester. As for the shootout, no arrests had been made as of late Tuesday. …

Later that night, someone walking on Quinnipiac Avenue was robbed at gunpoint. A man was walking at 12:50 a.m. Tuesday on Quinnipiac Avenue near Foxon Boulevard when two males in their 20’s approached him with a gun. They stole his wallet and some jewelry, said police.

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