Man Shot Outside Candidate’s Barber Shop

Charles Ashe III had just finished running for state office when a shooting took place a block from the polls — right in front of his barber shop.

The shooting occurred Thursday around 8:45 p.m.

Forty-five minutes earlier, the polls had closed at Lincoln-Bassett School, one of six voting locations in a special election for an open seat in the state General Assembly. Ashe was one of five candidates in that race. He won the vote at Lincoln-Bassett, though he ended up finishing third overall. (Read about that race here.)

Ashe was inside his barber shop on Shelton Avenue near Bassett Street along with supporters when shots rang out just outside the front door.

Police arrived to find a 19-year-old man shot in the leg and shell casings on the ground, according to police spokesman Officer David Hartman. The man went by ambulance to Yale-New Haven Hospital, where he was treated for a non-life-threatening wound.

Ashe was back cutting hair in his shop Friday. He said he had no comment on the incident. Meanwhile, a police investigator was in the shop reviewing surveillance video.

Lt. Al Vazquez, the police department’s head of major crimes, said investigators so far have no reason to believe the shooting had any connection to the election.

Witnesses told cops they saw a white car with three men inside leaving the scene of the shooting.

Newhallville Alderwoman Delphine Clyburn said it was too dark for witnesses to see the license-plate number of the car. She said that may have been because it’s so dark in general at night on that commercial block. Clyburn said she has been pushing the city to put in brighter streetlights and to make sure to get in front of trimming tree branches that block streetlights.

Baby’s Cries Led To Felon’s Arrest: In other police news, officers responding to a report of a crying baby ended up tussling with a fleeing felon.

Here’s what happened, according to Officer Hartman (with his precise words in quotation marks):

Someone called around 8 a.m. Thursday to report ​“they’d heard a child crying for some time” in an apartment at the Farnam Court public-housing complex on Franklin Street. Officers Elvin Rivera and Jeffrey Fletcher went to investigate.

At the front door, they knocked, no answer. They heard nothing.

Try the back door, a neighbor suggested. That door was ​“wide open.” And a baby was still crying.

The officers ​“called out to anyone inside. They got no answer. The officers went toward the sound of the crying baby. They found a three year old boy, sitting on a mattress on the floor.

“In an adjacent bedroom, the officers found a man sleeping in a bed. Nothing the officers tried including pounding on the bedroom wall would wake the man.

“It was then that Officer Rivera spotted a jacket on the floor by the bed. There was a pistol protruding from the jacket pocket. The man in bed suddenly got up and reached for the jacket. The officers struggled with him and handcuffed him.”

They took him outside to a patrol car. Along the way, the suspect, a 30-year-old convicted felon from the Hill neighborhood, ​“head-butted Officer Fletcher and ran off. He was quickly apprehended down the street by Officer Steven Silk.

“The officers found the child’s mother, who’d returned to the apartment. She said she’d left the baby in [the suspect]‘s care while she took another child to school. She denied knowing anything about the gun or the drug paraphernalia found in her apartment.”

Police charged the man, who’s not related to the woman or the baby, ​“with criminal possession of a pistol, altering or removing the markings on a
firearm, risk of injury to a child, interfering with police and assaulting a police officer. He was also served with five outstanding warrants. The child’s 24 year old mother was also arrested and charged with risk of injury to a child.”