nothin East Rock Neighbors Thwart Assault | New Haven Independent

East Rock Neighbors Thwart Assault

A woman cried out as she was being pulled into the bushes on Bishop Street. Her neighbors answered the call.

Neighbors who came out on their porches scared off an assailant after he grabbed a woman on Bishop Street in East Rock early Saturday morning.

Here’s what happened, according to police spokesman Officer Dave Hartman and emails circulating the neighborhood:

At around 2 a.m. on Saturday, a young woman was walking home alone on Bishop Street between Orange and Whitney when she was grabbed from behind by a man. She screamed and fought as the man tried to pull her into nearby bushes. Neighbors heard her and called the cops and opened their doors to see what was happening. The attacker fled when people began calling to the woman from their porches.

Police arrived within minutes, but neighbors were not able to provide a description of the attacker. The woman was not physically hurt.

Woman, Twice Arrested, Assaults Cops

The first time police arrested a 32-year-old woman, for disorderly conduct, she went quietly. The second time they arrested her, only a few hours later for larceny, she spit at, kicked and punched cops.

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

On Sunday at 4:43 p.m., a 32-year-old woman approached Officer Michael Styles near Whalley Avenue and Sherman Street and said she’d just been assaulted. She told the cop that she’d been at a Mobil gas station when a 28-year-old woman—with whom “she’s had an unpleasant past,” according to Hartman—confronted her. The 32-year-old said she drove away, then spotted the 28-year-old a few blocks away, now with two friends, “White Girl Jessica” and “Devil.” The three women assaulted the 32-year-old and took her car keys.

Officer Christopher Simon arrived to investigate. The 28-year-old returned to the scene and offered a different story. She told cops that the 32-year-old had assaulted her and taken her car keys at the gas station. “White Girl” had been driving by and picked her up to help her find the 32-year-old.

Police arrested both the 28- and the 32-year-old on disorderly conduct charges and took them to police headquarters. But the drama didn’t end there.

Later, at 11 p.m., after the two women had been released on promises to appear, Officers Ross Van Nostrand and Matthew Abbate reported to headquarters on a theft complaint. They spoke with a woman named Jessica who told them she’d parked in front of the police station and gone inside to pick up her friend, the 28-year-old, who was being released from detention. Her friend, back in the car, later told her that the 32-year-old had taken a Coach bag from the car, claiming it was hers. The bag actually belonged to the 28-year-old.

As Jessica was telling cops this, the 28-year-old got a call from a friend who told her that the 32-year-old had just given her the Coach bag. Police went with Jessica and the 28-year-old to her friend’s house, to retrieve the bag.

At the woman’s house in the Waverly Townhouses in West River, the woman pointed out a tan Nissan nearby. She told cops that the 32-year-old was in the car. Officer Abbate tried stopping the car, but it reversed down Waverly Street and fled. After Abbate radioed in the description, Yale cops pulled it over at Dwight Street and Legion Avenue. The driver, a 32-year-old man was arrested on charges of interfering, failure to obey an officer, and driving with a suspended license.

Cops arrested the 32-year-old woman, who was in the car. When Officers Salvatore Ricci and Christopher Fennessy tried to take her to a prisoner wagon, she spit at them, then sat on the ground. They lifted her to her feet. She yelled and cursed and kicked them, hitting Officer Fennessy in the stomach and leg. She also kicked Officer Ricci several times.

At the detention center’s processing area, the woman was uncooperative. In a cell, as a judicial marshal was taking off her cuffs, the woman “lashed out at the marshal, punching her in the face with her fist,” Hartman said. “Other marshals responded and got [the woman] under control. Marshals who conducted ‘cell block tours’ were threatened by [the woman]. She repeatedly screamed she’d shoot them and their homes when she got out.”

Officer Orlando Crespo, the booking officer, arrested the woman on additional counts of threatening and assault of a police officer. The police revoked her previous conditional offer of release.

In other police news, according to Hartman:

“You Gonna Arrest Me?”: At 1 a.m. on Monday, Officers Christopher Cacela and Jason Jemiola responded to a trespassing complaint at H&S food mart at 306 Whalley Ave. As they pulled up, they spotted two young men in front of the store. One of them, a 20-year-old, was familiar. The Shooting Task Force had told cops he is a drug dealer. The clerk at the store pointed at the man and said he was the loiterer.

The store has two “No Loitering” signs visible. The men had nevertheless been standing in front of the store for an hour, “despite a plea from the clerk to take their illicit business elsewhere,” Hartman said. “After a brief investigation, [the 20-year-old’s] wrong answers landed him in a pair of handcuffs for trespassing.”

A search of the man found cash in $100 bundles, drug packaging, a cell phone, five bags of pot and a single ecstasy pill. The 20-year-old asked cops, “I got one E pill and five bags of weed. You gonna arrest me?” according to Hartman. “The officers responded in the affirmative, charging him with eight drug crimes and trespassing.”

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