Homicide Victim & Friends
Drove To Town To Party

A carload of five young women met up on Shelton Avenue with a carload of men to ​“party” when gunshots rang out — and fatally struck a 20-year-old woman from Danbury in the head and neck.

The shooting, New Haven’s second homicide in a little more than 11 hours, took place at 12:17 a.m., according to police.

The victim, Ashley Armstrong, was driving a Volkswagen Jetta filled with four other young women. Another woman was from Danbury, too. Two were from New Haven, one from New York, according to Assistant Police Chief Archie Generoso.

They met up with four men in a Chevy Impala outside 84 Shelton.

“They knew one of the guys in the other vehicle. They met up with them to party,” Generoso said.

The gunshots that erupted did not come from inside the vehicles, according to Generoso. Police don’t yet know who fired them, he said. They have a ​“vague” description of an assailant.

Armstrong drove away from the scene, down Shelton Avenue toward downtown New Haven. The car stopped across the street from Country Market at the crossroads of Shelton, Dixwell, Munson and Orchard.

Police, initially alerted by the ShotSpotter computerized system then by 911 calls, found Armstrong in the front seat of the car. None of the passengers was hurt. She was taken to the Hospital of St. Raphael, where she was pronounced dead at 12:37 a.m.

Country Market was closed at the time. The next morning, as detectives fanned out through the Newhallville neighborhood, they paid a visit to the market’s owner, Bob Yaser (pictured at the top of the story). They asked Yaser if he had video footage of the incident; he said he told them no, because his surveillance system covers just the inside of the store.

“This is the hottest intersection in New Haven,” Yaser said Wednesday morning as he waited on a steady stream of customers, who were just beginning to hear and share unverified tidbits about the homicide.

Meanwhile, over in the Dwight neighborhoods, friends of 20-year-old Tyrell Trimble set about relighting memorial candles at a vigil set up on the spot where he lost his life Tuesday shortly before 1 p.m.

A masked gunman shot Trimble at Elm and Kensington streets, where he often hung out, outside a laundromat at the Stop & Shop plaza in the Dwight neighborhood. Read about that here.

“It does not appear that the two” homicides had anything to do with each other, Assistant Chief Generoso said. Both investigations remain in the preliminary stages. Police have been pursuing a number of people whose names have ​“come up” in the Trimble homicide but at this point are not ​“close to a warrant for anybody,” Generoso said. Police ask anyone with information about either incident to call them at (203) 946‑6304.

Meanwhile, city police say they’ve solved a 2007 murder — and are arresting a jailed man already accused of three other murder. They believe the man may have committed other murders, as well. The Register’s Bill Kaempffer has the story here.