nothin Tow Co. Clerk Assaulted | New Haven Independent

Tow Co. Clerk Assaulted

A dispute about taxes and towing devolved into fisticuffs, with a pregnant woman in the thick of it.

Here’s what happened, according to police spokesman Officer Dave Hartman:

At 9 p.m. on Monday, Officer Sean Maher responded to Crown Auto on York Street on a report of an assault. “He arrived to find three women and one man locked in the fenced-in tow yard,” Hartman reported. “The women were yelling at one another.”

The man told Maher that he’d locked the gate to prevent two women—a mother and a daughter—from escaping after assaulting a clerk. The 51-year-old mother told Maher that she’d brought her 24-year-old daughter to the tow company to retrieve her car, which had been towed for unpaid taxes. The mother told Maher that the tax bill had been paid a month earlier to a tow truck driver, who had given her a receipt written on a business card. She claimed the tow company had then taken the “business card receipt” but refused to give her car back. She claimed she was assaulted by the towing company clerk because she blocked the gate with her foot.

The Crown receptionist, who is eight months pregnant, told a different story. She told Maher that she’d listened to the mother’s claim that the taxes had been paid. “She said she explained payments aren’t accepted other than at the at the city’s tax office or at Crown Towing’s office. She said she told the women to return in the morning to clear up the matter with her boss,” Hartman said.

Then, according to the clerk, the daughter got in her car and started driving toward her. “She said she stood her ground as the car bucked forward.” The daughter got out and continued arguing. The clerk said she asked the mother and daughter to leave several times. They blocked the gate.

The receptionist was then pushed from behind by the daughter, she told Maher. She tried to close the gate “but both of the women were now punching her in the face, scratching her and pulling her hair.”

“Officer Maher took a look at surveillance tapes that corroborated the receptionist’s account of what happened. He arrested the mother and daughter on charges of assault and trespassing. The car remained in custody as well.

“The ‘business card receipt’ was not, in fact, lost. It was at the bottom of a trash can—torn into pieces. It was pieced together and entered as evidence.”

In other police news according to Hartman:

“Nothing. @#&%!”: At about 11 p.m. on Monday, Officers Steven Cunningham, Jason Rentkowicz, and Steven Formica responded to a domestic dispute on Kossuth Street, where a man told them his drunk brother had punched him.

Officers confronted the brother, who seemed intoxicated.

“‘What happened?’ asked Officer Cunningham,” Hartman said. “‘Nothing,’ was the reply, followed by a string of unintelligible words and profane outbursts.”

The officers produced a pair of handcuffs. The man began to fight the cops, who tried to control him. Officer Cunningham took a punch to the face.

The man was arrested and charged with breach of peace, interfering, and assaulting an officer.

Shooting Suspect Arrested: Police Tuesday charged a suspect with shooting a man on Hamilton Street on Oct. 14.

On that day, at 4:58 p.m., police responded to a scene near the Farnam Court housing project. Witnesses told cops the victim had been driving toward Grand Avenue behind a man on a “motorized bicycle.” The men, who knew each other, confronted each other near a playground and one shot the other, twice.

The victim was taken to Yale-New Haven Hospital, where he remains in the intensive care unit.

At noon on Tuesday, New Haven police, detectives, and members of the U.S. Marshal’s fugitive task force arrested the alleged shooter, a man who turned 29 between the shooting and his arrest.

Investigators had learned that the suspect was hiding out on the third floor of a building on Gilbert Avenue. They charged the man with assault, criminal possession of a firearm by a felon, carrying a pistol without a permit, and risk of injury to a minor.

Detective Wayne Bullock took the lead on the case, working with Fair Haven cops and other detectives.

For block-by-block year-to-date crime info, check the Independent’s Crime Log.

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