After a nearly 30-hour hunt, New Haven and Hamden cops surrounded a house early Tuesday morning — then brought out a 20-year-old man accused of shooting at detectives in the wee hours of Sunday morning.
The arrest took place around 4 a.m. Tuesday.
The cops charged the 20-year-old with a series of weapons offenses in connection with an incident that took place around 3 a.m. on Sunday, when someone fired bullets at detectives who had joined a raid on an apartment at the Presidential Gardens complex on Dixwell Avenue. (No one was hit.)
Read about that incident here.
Cops have been looking for the suspected shooter—who had fled the scene after shooting, and who goes by the nickname T-Carter—since then. They found him Tuesday “holed up” in a house across the Hamden line on Grandview Avenue. A host of officers showed up on scene, and he was arrested without incident, according to police spokesman Officer David Hartman.
T-Carter, who is being held on $250,000 bond, lives in Atlanta. When he’s in New Haven, he stays at the apartment in Presidential Gardens, according to Hartman. That apartment has been the site of past raids and incidents, and has been subject of a years-long eviction court battle between the landlord, Matthew Harp of Renaissance Management, and legal aid. A young man who lived there with his grandmother has been sent to prison. The grandmother recently lost a court challenge to her eviction and has under 60 days to vacate her apartment.
Police suspect T-Carter of being involved in numerous shootings that are currently under investigation, according to Hartman. They also recovered a gun that they believe T-Carter used to shoot at the cops at Presidential Gardens. (An estimated six to eight bullets had been shot in the Presidential Gardens courtyard.)
Meanwhile, a second unrelated arrest Sunday evening brought more illegal guns, and promising evidence, into police hands.
In that incident, police stopped a car that matched the description of a car linked to T-Carter. T-Carter wasn’t in the car. Four men, ranging in age from 26 to 34, were in the car. Three were convicted felons. Two guns were in the car, too, according to Hartman: “a Hi-Point .40 caliber Smith &Wesson and an Intratec .9mm handgun with an obliterated serial number.” Also in the car: 51 grams of crack.
Police arrested the quartet on various drug and weapons charges. Hartman said that evidence recovered in both that incident and in the T-Carter case may be related to a host of shootings that have occurred in town lately. Cops have instituted “an intense crackdown and series of investigations” into those incidents, he said, and this evidence may well help.
