Thomas Breen Photos
Addys Castillo at Stetson powwow: Time to take action.
March. Flyer. Grieve. Organize.
A dozen community organizers from a dozen neighborhood groups resolved to do that Wednesday afternoon during an emergency anti-violence planning session held three blocks from where a 9‑year-old boy was shot in Dixwell.
The meet-up, organized by Ice the Beef Youth President Chaz Carmon, took place at noon at the Stetson Branch Library on Dixwell Avenue. It came on the heels of a 9‑year-old being shot in the pelvis Tuesday night near the corner of Foote Street and Ashmun Street.
Wednesday’s gathering brought together organizers who have also been involved in protests that have shut down city streets following the recent officer-involved shooting of an unarmed couple in Newhallville, Wednesday’s gathering featured no less passion, hurt, and coalition-building among city activists set on eliminating gun violence in New Haven’s neighborhoods.
Amidst shelves upon shelves of biographies, children’s books, poetry, and movies made by and about African Americans, the meet up featured representatives from Ice the Beef Youth, People against Police Brutality, Black Lives Matter New Haven, New Haven Rising, the New Haven People’s Center, the S.P.O.R.T.S. Academy, and New Haven Legal Assistance Association, among others.
“The most powerful thing we have right now is momentum,” Citywide Youth Coalition Executive Director Addys Castillo said about the wave of police accountability protests.
But people can’t just take to the streets when an officer fires a gun, she said. They also have to turn out when neighbors shoot at neighbors. “It’s both/and,” she argued.
Shooting Update
Wednesday afternoon’s coalition-building meeting at the Stetson Library.
The 9‑year-old boy was playing basketball on a court at Wexler-Grant School near his home Tuesday when some boys around his age showed up. One boy took the ball and left, according to police.
The boy told his parents what happened. The boy’s father walked with him around the neighborhood seeking to retrieve the ball. The mother joined them, in a car.
The parents drove the car repeatedly around the block, slowly, dozens of times, in hopes of locating the boy who stole the ball.
As the vehicle drove down Foote Street, gunshots were fired at it around 6:50 p.m. One bullet hit the boy in the pelvis.
Foote Street looking towards Ashmun.
There is no evidence reported at this point tying the shooting to the theft of the ball. Numerous other theories have been advanced tied to how the slow cruising of a vehicle through the neighborhood might have been interpreted.
The family drove the boy to Yale-New Haven Hospital’s St. Raphael Campus, where he was treated. He has since been moved to Yale-New Haven’s Children’s Hospital on Park Street, where he is reported in stable condition with non-life-threatening injuries.
As is customary in these cases, Yale Child Study clinicians also responded to the scene to interact with neighborhood children who witnessed the shooting.
The boy’s family recently moved to New Haven from another community.
“Enough Is Enough”
Ice The Beef Youth President Chaz Carmon.
The activists gathered at Stetson on Wednesday knew few of those details at the time that they met. All they knew was that a 9‑year-old had been shot in the neighborhood, just weeks after a 17-year-old was shot on Willow Street, which happened just days afteran unarmed 21-year-old and 22-year-old were shot at by the police on Argyle Street.
“It’s time for us to say enough is enough,” said S.P.O.R.T.S. Academy Founder Sean Reeves, who lost his own 16-year-old son to gun violence in 2011. “I need to leave my kids something. I’m not leaving my kids this.”
“We can’t point the finger at anyone else when it comes to what happened last night,” Stetson Branch Manager Diane Brown said. “That’s us.”
Legal aid community organizer Caitlin Maloney and Black Lives Matter New Haven Co-Founder Ala Ochumare.
Carmon said that the teens in his youth organization who learn music, dance, and political organization had already been planning an anti-gun violence march down Dixwell Avenue for the last Saturday of May after learning about the 17-year-old who was shot during a dispute at a party on Willow Street.
But when he woke up Wednesday morning and found out about the 9‑year-old who had been shot, he said, he knew that groups like his must start acting sooner.
So, he posed to the dozen people who showed up for the meeting at the library, what should we do?
Stetson Branch Manager Diane Brown.
“We need to build sustainable things,” Black Lives Matter New Haven Co-Founder Ala Ochumare said. In addition to marching in the street and venting anger, community groups need to band together to provide regular spaces for discussion, grieving, and strategizing around how to end gun violence, racism, sexism, and police brutality.
Brown offered her library as a space to do just that. What if representatives from these groups, dedicated to these causes, meet at the library once a week or every other week to be together, think together, and organize?
“That relationship building is really critical,” People Against Police Brutality organizer Kerry Ellington said. She called Stetson one of the few public spaces that she truly feels comfortable and safe in.
Demethra Telford.
In addition to meeting on a regular basis and marching at the end of the month, Carmon said, the group should hold a more immediate rally starting at the Stetson Library on Saturday at 5:30, and should consider flyering and doorknocking and keeping youth victims of gun violence at the front of neighbors’ minds, so that people don’t become, or remain, desensitized to these types of shootings.
After Ice the Beef Youth member Tyrick Keyes was shot and killed in July 2017, he said, organizations like his held constant rallies in Newhallville and Dixwell decrying gun violence and calling for jobs and a community center for the neighborhoods.
“We’ve got to keep making noise about it,” he said.
“It’s all needed,” Brown added. “The rally, the march, the scream, the yell. Everybody needs to do something.”
Newhallville top cop Lt. Manmeet Colon.
Newhallville/Dixwell top cop Lt. Manmeet Colon arrived at around 1 p.m. to tell the group that she had just been with the family of the boy who had been shot. She asked anyone present to come to the police if they have any information on what might have happened on Tuesday night.
Castillo thanked Colon for coming but said that she should try coming when she’s not wearing her uniform when she’s not on the clock. That way, she said, she will know whether or not the lieutenant is truly, personally invested in helping groups like those present combat structural inequality that leads to gun violence.
“I don’t have a problem with the police,” she said. “I do have a problem with policing.”
Colon said the police are interested in bringing justice to the family of the boy who was shot by apprehending the person or persons involved in the shooting. And to do that, she said, the police need community members to come forward with any information they may have.
“Any little bit helps,” she said.
Police have been following up on some leads. They ask anyone with relevant information to call detectives at (203) 946‑6304.
Paul Bass contributed reporting.
No comments? No protests? No outrage? Lol no surprise