Police were preparing to arrest a man known as “Little Larry” for murder Thursday morning. They were hours too late.
“Little Larry,” aka Lawrence Mabery, was shot in the face late Wednesday night on Frank Street. He was 18 years old. It was one of three apparently unrelated shooting incidents in one evening, the latest in a summer of youth gun violence that has New Haven on edge. (Click here to read the police department’s press release on the shootings.)
City detectives had been working for days with the State’s Attorney’s Office on warrants for three men in connection with the July 12 murder of Domingo Rodriguez, who was shot while sitting in his car on in the Kimberly Square section of the Hill neighborhood. Two of the three men actually shot Rodriguez as part of a robbery, according to New Haven State’s Attorney Michael Dearington. Mabery was the main shooter, pumping nine bullets into Rodriguez, while a second man, known on the street as “Jerk,” fired another bullet, Dearington said. A second man was shot, and survived.
“In the past 24 hours we were in intense discussions” with New Haven detectives on warrants for Mabery, “Jerk,” and an accomplice, Dearington said Thursday. “We assumed the warrant would be issued today.” That proved unnecessary in the case of Mabery. Police did apprehend “Jerk” on the street; the accomplice, already in jail on an unrelated charge, was arrested, as well.
A city detective familiar with the investigation said Mabery was a suspect in two other murders in addition to the July 12 shooting of Rodriguez: the fatal shooting in June of 27 year-old Samuel Mallory in Newhallville; and the shooting of an elderly man who was sitting in a car in Newhallville.
The detctive said that all three murders were committed with a .45. Mabery had two loaded guns on him at the time of his murder, he said, one of them a .45. Detectives believe Wednesday night’s shooting of Mabery may have been in retaliation for one of the other murders.
