Officers found a trove of crack and a loaded 9mm handgun after responding to a domestic dispute on Valley Street Thursday afternoon.
The incident began shortly before 5 p.m with a call about an armed man threatening to shoot someone.
Here’s what happened, according to police spokesman Officer David Hartman:
The officers, Edward Dunford and Christian Bruckhart, arrived to find a 29-year-old woman “on the front lawn yelling into a cell phone” and a 29-year-old man opening the front door, stepping outside, then running back in after spotting the cops.
The man “reemerged a few seconds later and asked the officers why they were there. The officers handcuffed him and told him it’d been reported he had a gun and was involved in a fight.”
The pair at first denied fighting, then changed their story after cops noticed “fresh scratches” on the woman’s neck. The officers obtained permission to search the apartment, where they found “163 bags of crack cocaine, a bag of marijuana, two phones, suspected drug packaging materials and a loaded Walther P99 9mm handgun that belongs to some guy that lives in Shelton. The gun hadn’t been reported stolen.”
The officers arrested the woman on second-degree breach of peace charges and the man on a host of weapons and assault and drug offenses. They also called the state Department of Children & Families because they “determined” that a 7‑year-old and 7‑month-old child in the apartment “had access to the drugs and weapon.”
Murder Arrest
Police Thursday also charged a 19-year-old Hill man with murder and first-degree assault in connection with the Aug. 1 shootings of Tyrese Jones and Troy Mitchell at Kensington and Chapel streets. Jones subsequently died of his injuries from the shooting. (Click here to read about a 2013 murder case that fell apart Friday when a witness recanted.) David Zaweski was the lead detective in the murder investigation.
Paul Bass Photo
On Friday afternoon Jones’ brother, William Jowers, and parents, Felicia and Jymeson Jones, stood silently with police victim services Officer Jillian Knox at a 1 Union Ave. press conference …
… as Chief Dean Esserman, a line of assistant chiefs and detectives to his left, formally announced the murder charge. “A child of this family is a child of this city,” Esserman said.
Will there be a follow up investigation into the 2013 homicide, and will Chief Esserman be apologizing to both families for the end result of his Departments investigation.