Cops Make Swift Arrest In Michael Wint’s Murder

Cops credited new video cameras — and old-fashioned detective work — with helping them make an arrest of an accused murderer 16 days after he allegedly shot Michael Wint to death.

Wint — a 33-year-old New Havener who had used his own experience seeking to straighten out his life to help other young people do the same — died after getting shot inside a white Chevrolet Malibu parked outside a commercial strip at Whalley and Sherman Avenues on Jan. 21 shortly before 1 a.m..

On Monday police arrested a 45-year-old New Haven man on murder and criminal possession of a firearm by a felon, among other charges, in connection with the incident.

“I thank the New Haven police department for acting so swiftly,” Wint’s mother, Joanne Wint (pictured above), said at a press conference held at police headquarters Thursday afternoon to announce the arrest.

Surveillance footage from both businesses at the location and from a new surveillance camera installed by police at the corner captured the incident, according to the arrest warrant affidavit.

Wint was parked outside a commercial and residential plaza. A licensed real estate broker, Wint had recently opened an office in the plaza for a limited liability corporation he had formed, according to his mom.

The accused shooter was with another person in a green car parked at the shopping strip around midnight, to buy a ​“dutch” at the gas station convenience store there so they could sprinkle it with PCP and smoke it, according to the affidavit.

The accused shooter then allegedly recognized Wint in the other car. He allegedly walked up to the car.

The city’s ShotSpotter system recorded two shots fired at 12:59:35 a.m., then three more at 12:59:43 a.m.

The surveillance video allegedly showed the arrestee firing the first shots, then walking away as the following shots were fired in his direction, according to the affidavit.

Wint was hit in the left arm, ​“close to the armpit in which the bullet entered through the lung and heart,” according to the affidavit.

The arrestee was hit, too, in the stomach and ​“lower right flank.” He hopped back in his car and drove himself to the emergency room at the Yale New Haven Hospital Saint Raphael Campus on Chapel Street. A new license-plate-reading camera obtained by police captured the arrestee’s car taking that route, according to police.

Officer Endri Dragoi happened to be across the street from the shopping plaza at Sam’s Mart when the shots rang out. He heard the shots. He and another officer ran over.

Bystanders yelled at the officers and ​“were very rough” as they worked to secure the scene and help Wint, Police Chief Karl Jacobson said at Thursday’s press conference.

Wint was taken to Yale New Haven’s York Street emergency room, where he was declared dead at 2:27 a.m.

The arrestee, too, was badly injured in the shooting. Detectives sought to interview him in the hospital; he refused to discuss the incident, according to the affidavit.

Detectives pieced the case together through the video and ShotSpotter evidence as well as interviews, recovered weapons, gunshot residue found on one of the cars, bloodstains, and partial ballistic fragments, interviews, including with an eyewitness who subsequently made a positive photo identification of the alleged shooter from among eight pictures, according to the warrant.

The arrestee remains in the hospital in critical but stable condition, according to police. He was arraigned in the hospital and has not yet entered a plea in the case. State marshals are protecting and monitoring him; he is being held on $2 million bail.

Wint’s grandmother, Peggy Minott (pictured above), spoke of how the shooter robbed her grandchildren of their father and left them frightened to attend school.

“This is not the way for children to live,” Minott said. ​“What are we going to do? We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to get these guns off the street. We must for our children’s sake.”

Joanne Wint remembered her son as ​“a jokester. My son was a jokester. Very comical. He enjoyed laughing, sitting around the house laughing. I’m going to miss him coming over and us sitting around the house watching movies and hanging out.”

Murderer Convicted

In a separate, 2021 murder, a jury has found 32-year-old Brianna Triplett guilty of having shot to death 29-year-old Dwaneia Alexandria Turner on Auburn Street.

Judge Elpedio Vitale is scheduled to sentence Triplett on April 25.