Adult Ed Lease Approved
by | Jun 5, 2025 8:35 pm | Comments (6)
It’s official: the New Haven Adult Education Center will continue to rent in the Hill for at least another year and a half, now that the Board of Alders has approved a lease renewal.
Newhallville
Freddy Fixer Marches On
by | Jun 1, 2025 7:50 pm | Comments (1)
Mona Mahadevan photos
Geanni Center Step Team steps fiercely down Dixwell.
Alanna Herbert led the way.
The organizers gathered for a celebratory post-parade photo.
Donning a sparkly pink gown and regal tiara, Alanna Herbert cupped her hand and waved to hundreds of cheering spectators along Dixwell Avenue.
As the first-ever Freddy Fixer Parade Queen and 2024’s Miss Puerto Rico of Greater New Haven, she said it felt “empowering” to wear crowns that honor each side of her mixed-race heritage.
Herbert rode in a small, cream-colored convertible at the head of the Freddy Fixer parade on Sunday afternoon, leading 87 floats of marching bands, synchronized dancers, and community groups from Bassett Street to Lake Place.
25-Year-Old Driver Dies After Car Crash
by | May 19, 2025 11:21 am | Comments (6)
A 25-year-old New Havener named Shaquaza Morris died after an early Saturday morning car crash on Shelton Avenue.
Decrepit Factory's Demolition Draws Near
by | May 2, 2025 3:11 pm | Comments (19)
Thomas Breen photos
Redeveloper Jake Pine: This demolition will be done right.
Highville Principal Che Dawson: Will this endanger kids?
275 Winchester, to come down starting this summer.
Demolition of the remaining vacant, toxic former Winchester Repeating Arms factory buildings near Munson and Mansfield Streets is slated to begin this summer.
The cleanup and teardown project should take roughly a year to complete — and will ultimately lead to the construction of new housing or lab/office space in Science Park.
Mothers & Others Organize To Protect Section 8
by | Apr 30, 2025 9:39 am | Comments (12)
Laura Glesby Photo
Neva Caldwell at the Mothers and Others for Justice meeting.
There were no empty seats at dinner in the basement of 660 Winchester Ave., where a group of 20 moms brainstormed how to bring landlords to the table in their fight to protect rent assistance.
Continue reading ‘Mothers & Others Organize To Protect Section 8’
State $2M Unspent, As Charter Nears Start
by | Apr 23, 2025 1:19 pm | Comments (5)
Thomas Breen photo
An ad for the new charter school at 794 Dixwell Ave.
Laura Glesby File Photo
Edmonds Cofield founder Boise Kimber: Charter school still "looking around for a building" to buy.
An all-boys charter school slated to open this fall in rented space in Newhallville still has $2 million in state money available to help it buy a building of its own — at a location yet to be determined.
Continue reading ‘State $2M Unspent, As Charter Nears Start’
"Camryn's Corner" Honors Beloved Teen
by | Apr 8, 2025 3:09 pm | Comments (0)
File photo
A 2021 vigil honoring Camryn "Mooka" Gayle at the corner now named after her.
“I told you, I told you,” cried Elizabeth Robinson. “I wasn’t gonna give up.”
She was talking to the memory of her 17-year-old daughter, Camryn “Mooka” Gayle, about the Newhallville intersection where Gayle died in a car crash in 2021.
Thanks to a Board of Alders vote Monday night, that intersection is now officially designated “Camryn’s Corner.”
Kia Boyz Concerns Race Thru Newhallville
by | Apr 2, 2025 1:38 pm | Comments (18)
Laura Glesby Photos
Jacqueline Beirne (with Kimberly Hart and Laurie Sweet): "The parents are overwhelmed."
“I don’t even want to call them kids,” said Kimberly Hart as she described the visceral fear of watching teen drivers speed, swerve and swirl up Shelton Avenue.
An hour later, after an emotional dialogue about the car-stealing “Kia Boyz” in Newhallville, Hart made the observation: “They’re babies.”
Wexler Parents Worry About Surprise Merger
by | Mar 31, 2025 10:09 am | Comments (17)
Maya McFadden photo
Wexler in-school suspension coordinator Doug Bethea: "A lot of people from this area can't go to Newhallville."
Keyana Calhoun fought back tears at the thought of her five elementary school-aged children being transferred from Wexler-Grant School in Dixwell to Lincoln-Bassett School in Newhallville.
She felt blindsided by the public school district’s decision to merge the two community schools. And as a Newhallville resident herself, she’s been working hard to keep her kids far away from what she considers to be her home neighborhood’s negative influences.
Continue reading ‘Wexler Parents Worry About Surprise Merger’
FD Report: Latest Xu-House Fire Began With Burning Basement Mattress
by | Mar 21, 2025 4:01 pm | Comments (11)
Thomas Breen photo
126 Sheffield. The fire department found it is "very well possible" that someone in the basement "improperly discarded a cigarette end at the floor near the wall that surrounded the oil tank."
File photo
City fire investigator Reyes (second from left) with property manager David Kone, at the scene of the Jan. 31 blaze. One of the six tenants displaced in the fire, who is now homeless, previously lost his home in a different Xu-house fire.
Either a cigarette or mixed wiring could have ignited a mattress in a basement of a Newhallville three-family house that burst into flames earlier this year.
Those details are included in a newly released report that sheds light on what may have caused just the latest of five fires in two years at different properties controlled by Bethany-based landlord Jianchao Xu.
Continue reading ‘FD Report: Latest Xu-House Fire Began With Burning Basement Mattress’
Wexler-Grant, Lincoln-Bassett To Merge
by | Mar 21, 2025 12:17 pm | Comments (19)
Thomas Breen photos
Wexler-Grant in Dixwell, to merge with ...
... Lincoln-Bassett in Newhallville.
Grappling with low enrollment and decaying buildings, the city’s public school district plans to merge Wexler-Grant and Lincoln-Bassett into a single PreK-8th grade school next academic year.
That doesn’t mean the total number of schools in New Haven will drop, however, as the district then plans to convert the current Wexler-Grant site into a new alternative middle school focused on “project-based learning.”
Suspect Arrested In Delivery Driver Murder
by | Mar 14, 2025 3:46 pm | Comments (7)
Contributed Photo
Raviteja Koyyada, an aspiring computer scientist, was shot and killed while delivering Chinese food.
Moments before his murder, 26-year-old delivery driver Raviteja Koyyada placed a paper bag containing Chinese food on the front porch of a Shepard Street home.
But that delivery order wasn’t actually called in from that house.
The call came from an IP address down the block — from the home of the 21-year-old woman who allegedly stole Koyyada’s car on Jan. 19 and shot him in the process, driving away as he bled and stumbled.
Continue reading ‘Suspect Arrested In Delivery Driver Murder’
Visual Oddities Go Beyond the Fuss
by | Mar 11, 2025 2:05 pm | Comments (0)
Jisu Sheen photo
Gendron with "Crazy Love II".
Sometime in the ’90s, a woman in cracked, green crocodile skin, gold booty shorts, and a hat of crocodile heads and rolls and rolls of red tickets posed as the camera snapped. Decades later, New Haven artist Edwin Gendron would pick up the black-and-white photo he took, hand-paint the colors in, and make it into something new.
The piece was among several, all transformations of some kind, that Gendron had on display at a pop-up event Saturday afternoon at Fussy Coffee in Science Park.
Judge Rejects "Retaliation," Approves Eviction
by | Mar 4, 2025 3:23 pm | Comments (10)
Thomas Breen photos
Judge Stone: Landlord's "primary motive" wasn't retaliation.
Shelly Thompson, Yonatan Zamir, Jeffrey Taylor, and Vorcelia Oliphant-Macher round out a two-day eviction trial.
A two-day eviction trial that revealed how emotionally fraught a long-term tenant-landlord relationship can get has culminated with a judge ordering the renter to leave because her lease has expired.
The legal debate at the trial centered on what counts as landlord “retaliation.” The judge found that a tenant can’t succeed with such a defense unless she proves that a landlord’s “primary motive” in taking her to court was to punish her for speaking out about housing code concerns.
Continue reading ‘Judge Rejects "Retaliation," Approves Eviction’
Gibbs Street Park Proposed
by | Feb 20, 2025 9:28 am | Comments (15)
Thomas Breen photo
Squint and you can almost see the green.
One idea for a future Gibbs Street Park, which received support from neighborhood kids.
A new public park may someday take shape where Gibbs Street meets the Farmington Canal Trail — perhaps with a playground, exercise equipment, and a park for neighborhood dogs.
Fire Wrecks Another Xu Rental Property
by | Jan 31, 2025 3:14 pm | Comments (13)
Friday's blaze, as documented by @NewHavenFire on X.
Thomas Breen photos
Property manager David Kone: No comment.
Displaced tenant Anthony Bruton: "The smell was so strong."
Another apartment building owned by Bethany-based landlord Jianchao Xu burst into flames Friday morning — displacing a half-dozen tenants, including Anthony Bruton, who rushed to safety after an overwhelming smell of smoke wafted up into his second-floor apartment.
Sacred Heart Grad, Delivery Driver Mourned
by | Jan 23, 2025 3:33 pm | Comments (5)
A photo of Raviteja Koyyada included in the family's GoFundMe.
The killing of 26-year-old restaurant delivery driver Raviteja Koyyada has sparked an outcry both locally and in his home country of India.
Continue reading ‘Sacred Heart Grad, Delivery Driver Mourned’
Warrant: Gun Dispute Preceded Teen Homicide
by | Jan 17, 2025 1:09 pm | Comments (4)
Thomas Breen photo
Chief Jacobson hugs Daily's grandmother at a recent presser about the arrest of Daily's alleged killer.
(Updated) The conflict that led to the killing of Daily Jackson may have stemmed, in part, from a gun allegedly stolen from the murder suspect by Uzziah Shell, a friend of Jackson’s who was killed in a separate shooting two weeks earlier.
Continue reading ‘Warrant: Gun Dispute Preceded Teen Homicide’
Harp Fined For Trash, Missed Inspections
by | Jan 10, 2025 3:19 pm | Comments (18)
Laura Glesby Photo
W. Matthew Harp, right, and his attorney Kirt Westfall.
LCI Photo
The since-cleaned-up backyard of 75 Brewster.
One man’s trash is another man’s tenant’s loose tires, copper pipes, and splintering wooden cart of debris and furniture.
Local landlord W. Matthew Harp floated that idea at a series of back-to-back civil citation hearings involving some of his properties, which saddled him with nearly $20,000 in fines.
Teen Homicide Victim Mourned As "Beautiful Spirit"
by | Dec 19, 2024 5:40 pm | Comments (11)
Nathaniel Rosenberg file photo
Daily Jackson, loved for his heart and his humor.
Tiny footprints in concrete and a “Daily knock” at the door helped bring Daily Jackson’s memory to life Thursday morning at a crowded funeral service for the 17-year-old Riverside student who was shot and killed in Newhallville earlier this month.
Continue reading ‘Teen Homicide Victim Mourned As "Beautiful Spirit"’
Teen Victim's Sister Pleads For Peace
by | Dec 6, 2024 4:13 pm | Comments (8)
Maya McFadden Photos
Daily Jackson's sister Curnijah Howard (left), best friend Corey (middle) and other sister Dalonna (right) at Thursday's memorial ...
... where friends and family celebrated the life and mourned the death of 17-year-old Daily Jackson.
Daily Jackson’s sister Dalonna called for young New Haveners who are mourning her late brother’s homicide to not retaliate, because all city teens “have a lot to live for.”
2 Riverside Teens, Friends, Killed In 2 Weeks
by | Dec 4, 2024 11:27 am | Comments (35)
Photo contributed by Colin Ryan
The late Daily Jackson, whose godfather described him as "an adorable kid who was bustling with energy."
Thomas Breen file photo
NHPS Supt. Negrón (right) on Wednesday: "Please know that these days are very hard for the school community."
(Updated) Seventeen-year-old New Havener Daily Jackson was walking on Shelton Avenue Tuesday evening when someone in a “suspect vehicle” shot and killed him and drove away — making him the second Riverside Academy student to die by gunfire in the past two weeks.
“These are connected,” Police Chief Karl Jacobson said at a Wednesday afternoon press conference, at which he described the two Riverside homicide victims as friends who belonged to the same “group” that has been feuding with another youth crew in town.
Continue reading ‘2 Riverside Teens, Friends, Killed In 2 Weeks’
Ground Broken On 4 New 2-Family Homes
by | Dec 2, 2024 3:06 pm | Comments (21)
Thomas Breen photo
Future homeowners Melvin Poindexter (center) and Sylvia Cooper (right), shoveling dirt alongside state housing commissioner Seila Mosquera-Bruno.
Melvin Poindexter and Sylvia Cooper dug their shovels into a pile of dirt on an empty Hazel Street lot — and helped move the ground that they, and future generations of their respective families, will some day soon call home.
An Open Letter To A Civil War Coin Dealer
by | Nov 22, 2024 3:47 pm | Comments (0)
Contributed photos
Two sides of a Civil War token, and the envelope that connects it to New Haven ...
Dear W.C. Sanders, secretary of the New Haven Numismatic Society circa 1939, resident of 5 Harding Place, or maybe 608 Dixwell Ave.
The New Haven Independent historical research team has an important message for you from the future: We found your Civil War token.
Continue reading ‘An Open Letter To A Civil War Coin Dealer’
St. Matthew's Accessibility: Going Up
by | Nov 15, 2024 11:12 am | Comments (6)
Nathaniel Rosenberg photo
Church Trustee Lee and Pastor Hardy talk up elevator benefits.
A second-floor meeting room at City Hall was temporarily transformed into a standing-room-only celebration of a religious community — as parishioners of St. Matthew’s Unison Free Will Baptist Church turned out in force to support adding an elevator to make their sanctuary more accessible for the elderly and disabled.