nothin Best Friends Murdered, 5 Years Apart | New Haven Independent

Best Friends Murdered, 5 Years Apart

Sam Gurwitt Photo

Tim Fields, Tanner’s brother, at Sunday night’s streetside vigil.

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Jericho Scott and Kaymar Tanner.

Five years and three months after Jericho Scott was shot and killed in a white car in Fair Haven, his best friend, Kaymar Tanner, died the same way — by a bullet shot into a white car on the 18th of the month.

Tanner, 22, was shot and killed Saturday at around 6 p.m. on Newhall Street just over the line in southern Hamden.

As his mother told a crowd of mourners Sunday evening, he died the same way his best friend did.

Scott was shot on April 18, 2015, on Exchange Street in Fair Haven in a car he had just stopped by to greet a friend. He died the next day. He was 16. (Click here to read a story about a commemoration that took place last year.)

They were so tight. Inseparable,” recalled Kaymar’s adoptive mother, Valerie Tanner.

She stood on the corner of Newhall and Newbury Streets Sunday evening, the old Hamden Middle School looming behind her against the twilight sky. Candles lined the sidewalk nearby, and about 100 people, most of them in their teens or 20s, stood in the intersection for a vigil.

Nicole Scott and Valerie Tanner.

Valerie Tanner stood next to Nicole Scott, the mother of Jericho Scott.

The two friends did everything together, Scott said. They played basketball and baseball together, and they were both short at first. And then they had their growth spurts at the same time, and they grew taller together.

I like to think that now they will be inseparable forever,” Scott said.

Tanner was one of Wilbur Cross’s, and then Hamden High’s, top basketball players. Reports on Hamden High games from 2015 and 2016 are sprinkled with his name. He continued to play after he graduated in 2016. He would play over at Villano Park, about a block from where he died, his sister Valdinia Pollard said.

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Kaymar Tanner.

Valerie Tanner said that after his best friend died, her son never quite healed. He went to therapy and participated in Youth Stat New Haven, an intervention program run by the city of New Haven.

Even with all of that,” she said, it left a hole in Kaymar’s heart.”

Our Lives Need To Matter To Us”

Sam Gurwitt Photo

At 7:30 Sunday evening, people began to gather in the small semicircular driveway of the old middle school, near where Tanner’s car stopped the day before after he was shot. His biological mother, Cheryl Foreman, sat on the ground holding the shattered side-view mirror of the car he died in. It was all that was left of the incident, she said.

Violence is not the way. It makes you a coward,” she said to the group standing on the other side of the fence that Tanner’s car had plowed through the day before. Foreman said she gave Tanner up for adoption when he was a baby.

After he was shot, Tanner drove West on Newbury Street, crossed Newhall Street, and ran over the fence of the new business incubator that opened this fall in the old rec center on the corner of Newhall and Morse Street. The car stopped on the inside of the fence.

Tire tracks were still visible Sunday, as were the bent pieces of fencing the car hit. The shattered side view mirror was lying in the grass in the afternoon, before Foreman would pick it up later in the evening.

A young man walked through the downed piece of fencing and hugged Foreman for a long time. A group of young men and women stood by the fence, some in stone-faced silence, one sobbing. A few sat on the hill above Foreman.

We was quiet. He was cool. He was respectful,” said Destiny, who declined to give her last name. She said she grew up with him. He was to hisself. He didn’t bother no-fucking-body.”

The crowd at the intersection nearby began to grow. A man passed out white candles. After a while, the crowd moved from the fence of the business incubator across Newhall Street to where a growing display of votive candles lined the sidewalk.

Daykwion Aleman, who said he knew Tanner because he is a good friend of Tanner’s older brother. He said he also went to middle school with Tanner.

A poster sat on the windshield of a car, messages slowly filling it. Long live Shorty 40,’” it said in large letters in the middle. Valerie Tanner said she learned a few of her son’s nicknames on Sunday. I did not realize that some people call him Shorty,’ she said. But he was Kay-Kay to me.”

Justin Farmer, who represents the district where the shooting happened on Hamden’s Legislative Council, had brought a megaphone. He held the megaphone as Valerie Tanner spoke into it.

I’m just overwhelmed to see so many people out here,” she said. I lost my son. I lost my baby. He’s my heart, and yes, he got on my nerves sometimes. He got on my nerves every day, but you know what? I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

As she spoke, she faced a mostly young crowd. She addressed them, imploring them to understand that they are the future.

You guys are the future,” she said. We need you. We need you to make better decisions. We need you to care about your lives. Your lives matter.”

To a lot of folks, our lives don’t matter,” she said. Our lives need to matter to us.”

Tanner said that young people in the neighborhood need to have more opportunities. There’s no hope,” she said. And that’s why a lot of them do the things they do.” The kids standing in the intersection mourning their friend are talented, smart, and have enormous potential, she said.

Love each other,” she told the young crowd. I mean really; put the guns down. Put the guns down.”

Neighbor Jumped Fence To Do CPR

The mourners Sunday evening packed the street outside the house of Stephanie Allis, who a day earlier had run across the street and hopped the fence to try to save Tanner.

Allis works at Yale New Haven Hospital as an adolescent mental health worker, though up until recently she was a patient care associate on a medical floor. She is a mother, is currently pregnant, and on top of it all, is finishing up her nursing degree online.

Her boyfriend was taking the dog out Saturday evening when he heard gunshots. He brought the dog inside, and told Allis.

Allis looked outside and saw a young woman running from where a car had just driven over the fence on the other side of the street, screaming for help. Allis ran outside. As a medical professional, she kicked into gear. Everyone around her had their phone out, she recalled, but no one was running over to help.

She ran across the street and hopped the fence to get to the car.

When I got to the car, he was hanging out the driver’s side,” she said. She checked his pulse. It was extremely high — 130 or 140 beats per minute. She said he had a bullet wound in his right shoulder, and there was a bullet hole through the right window of the car. He was fading in and out of consciousness, and she told him he had been shot. She bunched up his shirt over the wound to try to stop the bleeding.

She lay him back on the seat and started to administer CPR, but after a few compressions, she noticed that his chest was beginning to swell. She said that meant it was filling with blood.

She turned him to his side, and he started to vomit blood. After that, she said, she knew she could only hold him, unless someone could help her get him out of the car to keep administering CPR in a different position. His pulse slowed, she said.

Finally, the police arrived. An officer approached, putting on a mask, Allis recalled. Allis said she asked if the officer would help her move Tanner out of the car to keep doing CPR. The officer said no, that they would have to wait until the paramedics arrived.

By the time they did, it appeared to be too late. When he took his final breath, he had his head on my shoulder,” Allis said.

Nonetheless, paramedics took him out of the car, and started doing CPR. Allis said the paramedics asked police officers if they should take Tanner to the hospital, knowing, it seemed to Allis, that he had already passed. Police said yes. Paramedics loaded him onto a stretcher, and took him to the hospital, where he was officially pronounced dead.

Allis stood in her yard as she told that story Sunday afternoon. As she recounted the terrible events of the previous night, a man shouted out of a car as he drove by: Good lady! Thank you!”

Happy With Justin Farmer?”

Shortly before 6 p.m. Saturday, Nijija-Ife Waters heard five pops near her house. It didn’t sound like fireworks. She was on the phone with a friend at the time. I said Oh my God, that’s gunshots.’”

She said a car then went flying across the street and onto the circular driveway of the old middle school property across the street from her house. She said a young woman ran over from where the car had stopped, screaming, Somebody help me. He’s been shot.”

Waters called 911, and got a New Haven dispatcher. When she told the dispatcher where she was, the dispatcher said she had to transfer her to Hamden. But the Hamden line kept ringing, and ringing, and no one picked up. Eventually she reconnected with the New Haven dispatcher, who said she would call over to Hamden herself.

Waters’ phone did not record the call time of her 911 call, but by calling the friend she was on the phone with when the gunshots happened, she pieced together a timeline. The gunshots appear to have happened at around 5:57. The friend said she heard the confusion on the other end of the line, and when Waters figured out what was going on, she ended the call with her friend at 5:59 to call 911.

She said it felt like a long time before the police arrived, though a neighbor she spoke with said he had called 911 at 5:59 as well, and it seemed like the police showed up a few minutes later.

Police Chief John Sullivan said that based on the information he had received Sunday afternoon, the police arrived on scene three minutes after receiving the first 911 call. He said there were two dispatchers on duty at the time, and that the department would be examining the 911 calls to determine a timeline, which he said might be released on Monday.

Later in the evening, Detective Mark Sheppard approached Waters. After a brief exchange, Waters said she told Sheppard that she was mad because she didn’t understand why no one had picked up her 911 call, and how it seemed it to her it had taken long for police to respond.

He asked me was I happy with Justin Farmer,” she said. I was like, Yes, what does that have to do with it?’ He was like, That’s the people you need to speak to about it because they cut 10 positions at the police station.’”

Farmer represents the district where Waters lives on Hamden’s Legislative Council. He has been vocal on matters of policing and of systemic racism. He was one member of a majority of council members who voted this spring to eliminate 13 positions from the police department, almost all of them currently vacant.

Of the 13 positions the council cut, seven were police officer positions. Six of them were vacant. Two were lieutenant positions, one of which was vacant. And the remaining four were all vacant support staff positions.

Council members said those cuts were necessary because of the town’s tough financial situation. Aside from the board of education, the police department suffered the largest cut of any department, partly because it had the most vacant positions.

I feel that especially in the time that we are in, my gripes on the budget have been that we have not paid our pension obligations for 20 of 25 years I’ve been on the planet,” said Farmer (pictured above). And when it comes time for that officer to retire, he’s going to be depending on his pension to take care of his family, and to pay taxes to add value to his community.”

So, it’s heartbreaking to hear that 10 mostly empty positions somehow affected the ability of first responders to get to a 22-year-old young man,” he said. The slow response time, he said, had nothing to do with the 10 positions that the council almost unanimously decided to cut.”

Sheppard’s comment, though, affected the morale in the community,” Farmer said. Community trust, police trust, is down because of that comment.”

Sheppard, who is in charge of the ongoing homicide investigation, did not respond to an email asking about the exchange.

Sullivan (pictured above) said the budget cuts did not affect the department’s response time.

The budget cuts just came into place days ago. So, I don’t think that would factor into any of our response time,” he said. Our response time is very good, and it will continue to be very good. I am told in this case that it was three minutes.”

The department is conducting a homicide investigation. Sullivan said that the department will release more details on the shooting and on its response time in the next few days.

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