An argument that broke out during a 16-year-old’s birthday party inside Dixwell’s Red Cafe ended with a 20-year-old getting shot out on the street.
That happened around 10:30 p.m. Sunday.
Cassandra Lowery had reserved the club at the crossroads of the Dixwell and Newhallville neighborhoods, where Munson meets Henry and Ashmun streets, for a birthday party for her nephew. She hired a deejay and charged people $5 at the door.
She enlisted four members of the Wild Style Riders motorcycle club (including the nephew’s father) to pat down males coming into the party. Lowery said she herself patted down the females.
“We did a thorough pat down. We went so far that we were checking boots,” she said Monday. She said a police officer came by and watched them perform the pat-downs.
The officer hung around a while, then asked what time the party would end and split for a while, according to Lowery. Inside, “it was really nice. [The party] was going good. Until two guys got into an argument. We stepped in between.”
“We broke it up. We put them out the doors,” Lowery said. “They stepped across the street. Gunshots started going off. We called 911.”
She said she surmises that one of the fight’s participant had stashed a gun outside, or they encountered someone else on the street with a weapon.
She and Joyce Bellamy, who owns Red Cafe and was on scene at the time, said they heard three or four shots.
“Nobody would have gotten in with any kind of weapon,” Bellamy said. ““We can’t control the outside and what happens.”
“A lot of people don’t want to deal with the teens. If somebody calls for a private birthday, I try to give the neighborhood to prove people wrong, that the kids can be good. There’s not a lot for them to do. We’ve thrown a lot of teen parties, not just at Red Cafe, but other places. Kids look forward to this. Somebody to endanger children in the area, I just think it’s terrible,” she said.
The first three officers responding to the bar, Kealyn Nivakoff, Sheree Biros, and Charlie Gargano, “arrived to a chaotic scene,” according to police spokesman Officer David Hartman. Back-up officers arrived soon after. So did EMTs with the fire department, to help the 20-year-old shooting victim found on Henry Street. They took him to the St. Raphael’s campus of Yale-New Haven Hospital for treatment of a non-life-threatening abdomen wound.
Detectives and officers interviewed at least 35 witnesses at the scene, Hartman reported. The interviewees “at the bar ranged from 50 years old to 12 years old. Fourteen were under the age of 16 and included two 12 year-olds and three 14 year-olds.” The investigation is continuing.
Update: On Monday police said a second gunshot victim from that incident has come forward. She’s 16 years old. A bullet grazed her in the leg, police said.
I am completely shocked