New Haven police arrested a 22-year-old Blake Street man for allegedly battering his girlfriend — while bigger unrelated charges awaited.
Dressed in a hooded grey Gap sweatshirt and belt-less jeans that he had to keep pulling up, the 22-year-old man appeared in state Superior Court on Elm Street Wednesday afternoon to answer charges in three separate cases, including the domestic assault. Judge Elpidio Vitale ordered the man held on $150,000 cash bond.
Meanwhile, Bridgeport police prepared to serve a felony murder warrant on the same man. They accuse him of having shot dead a 57-year-old grocery store owner this past Saturday. He is to be held on $1 million bond on the murder charge. An alleged accomplice, also from New Haven, remained on the loose Wednesday afternoon.
The suspect arranged through his probation officer to meet with police Tuesday, then admitted being present at the Bridgeport murder scene and driving the vehicle used, according to someone familiar with the case.
New Haven police have questions they want to ask the same man. Because that Bridgeport murder in some ways resembled the April 6 murder of 39-year-old cashier Sanjay Chavada during an attempted robbery at the Citgo Pay Rite Food Mart on Forbes Avenue. Police from both departments have been in close contact on these cases. Police believe the same car may have been used in both incidents, which both involved a pair of armed robbers. After police took the 22-year-old man into custody Tuesday night, they arranged to pick up the sought-after car outside the man’s Blake Street home.
Officially, as of mid-Wednesday, New Haven police have not tied the man to the Citgo Pay Rite murder, according to police spokesman Officer David Hartman.
“New Haven and Bridgeport Police investigators have not confirmed a connection between their respective cases. The possibility they are connected has not, however been ruled out. The New Haven case is currently under investigation and developing,” Hartman stated in a release.
The suspect did not speak in court on Monday except to acknowledge that he understood the judge’s bond order.
The suspect appeared on felony larceny charges dating to January 2014; third-degree assault and first-degree reckless endangerment charges dating to last June; and, most recently third-degree assault charges stemming from a Jan. 26, 2015 incident at his address on Blake Street.
The police report on file at the court detailed his alleged assault on his girlfriend (and mother of his child).
The victim is quoted as saying that during an argument the suspect threw a soda bottle at her. It hit a door. She walked into the bedroom; he followed her in and “started ripping her maternity pictures off the wall and threw them on her bed and then came right up to her face and cornered her in the bedroom …
“She stated that [the suspect] has anger issues and sometimes blacks out,” the report continued. “[H]e just started punching her in the left side rib cage area … [A]t one point he grabbed her and threw her on the bed and kept hitting her. She stated that he hit her in the face several times.”
The woman reported escaping into the bedroom, her cellphone in hand. “[H]e ran after her and was trying to grab the phone away from [her]. She wouldn’t let go. He again threw her to the ground and began to drag her across the floor, hitting her again.”
She said she gave him the phone “so maybe he would stop hitting her.” It didn’t work. He allegedly took her phone, hid it, then “grabbed her and began to hit her all over again. … [A]t one point he grabbed an extension cord and whipped her with it.”
At this point she kicked him to try to escape. A kick landed on her face. That “made him angrier, and he grabbed her foot and bit it.”
After about a half hour, the suspect allegedly gave her a plastic bag and “told her to pack her things and get out.”
All I can do is pray