nothin Youth Worker On Mend After Shooting | New Haven Independent

Youth Worker On Mend After Shooting

Markeshia Ricks Photo

The scene on Elm Street Saturday.

Contributed Photo

Darcy Hudson.

It looks like the 51-year-old star youth worker who was shot Saturday will pull through — to the relief of not just her family and friends but also city leaders who have come to count on her to stem street violence.

One of those leaders is Mayor Toni Harp. Harp raced back home from Washington, D.C, Saturday afternoon when she learned that a gunman had allegedly shot the youth worker, Darcy Hudson, who’s his wife; then shot two cops; then holed up in a house until the SWAT team got him out, shooting him in the process. (Click here for a full story on the five-hour standoff.)

Harp arrived back in New Haven around 5 p.m. and headed straight to Yale-New Haven Hospital. There she joined relatives of Hudson as they prayed for her recovery while she underwent surgery for injuries she suffered to her forearms, hand, shoulder, and mid-section.

This is someone we all depend upon. Someone who does great work. It was something that really struck us to our hearts,” Harp said of Hudson during her latest appearance on WNHH radio’s Mayor Monday” program.

Lucy Gellman File Photo

Officer Shumway visiting with students at Lincoln-Bassett School last December.

Hudson is in stable condition. She’s talking” and will recover, her cousin, street outreach worker Leonard Jahad, told the Independent Monday. State police, who are investigating the incident and handling public relations about it, offered no update on the condition of the shooter, who was in Yale-New Haven Hospital. The two police officers shot in the arm at the scene — Scott Shumway and Eric Pessino — were released from the hospital that day.

Darcy Hudson has worked as a case manager for the New Haven Family Alliance for about a year and a half, according to her supervisor, Shirley Ellis-West. Before that Hudson volunteered with the alliance’s youth programs. Hudson is assigned to the Alliance-run Juvenile Review Board, an alternative community-based program that allows 8 to 17-year-olds to avoid being locked up for first offenses if they work with volunteers as well as a case manager to own up to their crime and make recompense.

Several of Hudson’s colleagues from the Family Alliance, including street outreach workers, showed up at the scene on Elm Street Saturday during the five-hour standoff.

Contributed Photo

Darcy Hudson with Shirley Ellis-West.

She walks into a room and smiles, and makes the families feel good. She’s a special person,” Ellis-West said Monday. We’re grateful that she is still here. We’re also grateful that it seems like she’s progressing.

It’s going to be a long journey, but that’s OK,” Ellis-West added. She’s a strong woman.”

Ellis-West spoke of how Hudson succeeds in building relationships with girls in trouble. She does the same with young males as well, she said.

Even on off hours, Hudson regularly works with young people, during neighborhood events on weekends and through her church, Ellis-West said.

Jason Bartlett, the city’s youth director, said Hudson has become an invaluable part of Youth Stat, a program credited with helping stem violence in town. It brings social workers, cops, school administrators, parole officers and others together each week at schools across town to plot strategies for keeping the highest-risk students in school and out of jail. He said she attends three to five Youth Stat meetings a week. She’s done group mentoring sessions for me” and done home visits for kids in the program, he said.

SWAT Tribute

Markeshia Ricks Photo

At the hospital Saturday, Harp also visited with members of New Haven’s SWAT team, who were being evaluated there.

On Mayor Monday,” she praised the team’s work in a life-threatening situation.

Most people think they should have just taken [the shooter] down because they get so angry. [The SWAT team] didn’t do that,” Harp noted. They handled it very professionally. Their lives were on the line.

It’s never easy to have to make those kinds of decisions,” Harp said. I can’t tell you how proud I am of them. I could tell it was not a beat-my-chest moment for these men. They are professionals in every sense of the word. This is very difficult for them.”

State police are keeping a tight lid on basic information about Saturday’s incident while they investigate it. For instance, it is not yet known what exactly happened when the officers finally went into the house on Elm Street to retrieve the armed man, what circumstances surrounded the shooting, and what injuries the man sustained.

On Saturday, before rushing home, Harp was leading a gathering of the African-American Mayors Association, for which she serves as president. She said Monday that New Haven will host the group’s women’s leadership retreat and an overall leadership summit from Oct. 18 – 20 at the Omni Hotel.

Click on or download the above sound file, or watch the Facebook Live video below, to hear the full episode of WNHH radio’s Mayor Monday.”

This episode of Mayor Monday” was made possible with the support of Gateway Community College and Berchem Moses P.C.

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