Suit: Cops Failed To Stop Domestic Homicide

Sheila Harris was murdered by her domestic abuser minutes after five police officers left her home, and hours after she arrived, scratched up, at police headquarters to report a stolen gun.

Now Harris’ daughter Mercedes Harris is suing the city and 13 officers, arguing the police should have done more to protect her mom on the night of Aug. 19, 2023.

Mercedes shot Christopher Garvin, her mom’s longtime parter and the father of two of her siblings, after witnessing him firing gunshots at her mother on that traumatic August night. 

Minutes after leaving Harris’ home, having been unsuccessful in locating the gun her abuser had allegedly stolen, police rushed back to the Shelton Avenue house. They found Harris and Garvin lying on the street, bleeding from gunshot wounds that eventually killed them both. 

“If they would have just stayed with her, she would still be here,” Mercedes said in an interview with the Independent. 

She replays one exchange with police in particular from the night of her mother’s killing: ​“I said, ​‘You guys are leaving? What if he comes back?’ They said, ​‘Just call the police.’”

Mercedes’ attorney has filed an official notice to the city of his intention to file a lawsuit charging civil rights violations, recklessness, wrongful death, and failure to protect, investigate, supervise, and train properly in this case.

The police department is currently conducting an internal affairs investigation into officers’ actions that night. They have not charged Mercedes in connection with the shooting.

Since her mother’s murder, Mercedes has lived in grief and fear. She said she heard that Garvin’s family had threatened to hurt her in revenge. She wants to believe she would call the police if she needed to, but she doesn’t have full faith that a 9 – 1‑1 call would lead to adequate protection.

Since shooting Garvin, Mercedes hasn’t received her own (legally-owned) gun back from the police, which makes her nervous about potential consequences for shooting a man whom she said was still pointing a gun at her mother’s head.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to me,” she said. ​“I’m nervous for my children.” 

Mercedes still lives in the Shelton Avenue house with her kids, though she wants to move out. ​“I still get paranoid,” she said. She sometimes finds herself awake at 2 a.m. checking to see that her kids are safe.

All the while, she is grieving a parent who died too young at 54.

“No amount of money could come my way” to make up for the loss, Mercedes said.

Sheila Harris worked for 20 years as a school bus driver at First Student. She lived in the upstairs apartment from Mercedes. Even from a flight of stairs apart, the two spoke on the phone every day. They biked together, went on hikes, worked out in the gym. They would go to Mohegan Sun, where Sheila could count on having a ball.

Harris was a ​“social butterfly,” recalled one friend, who wished to remain unnamed. 

“I’m angry because she was not protected,” said the friend, who lived nearby to the family.​“It feels like because it was a call coming from Dixwell-Newhallville, they didn’t take it seriously. I think it would have been different if the call had been coming from Westville or the East Shore.”

Mercedes’ lawyer, Alex Taubes, argued that the police should have taken far more seriously the danger that Harris faced from her partner.

Research shows that domestic abusers commonly escalate their violence when their victims attempt to leave or seek help from the police. The risk of that escalation is especially high when the abuser has access to a gun. 

What happened to Harris, Taubes said, is ​“the kind of thing that makes people not want to go to the police” about domestic abuse.

Mayor Justin Elicker wrote in a statement that the city is reviewing the notice to sue it received from Taubes. He called Harris’s death ​“tragic for her family, loved ones and our community. Cases involving domestic violence are treated with the utmost seriousness by the New Haven Police Department.”

The Police Left. Gunshots Ensued

Why did all five responding officers leave Sheila Harris’ house so soon before she was murdered, after hearing that her domestic abuser had stolen her gun?

Police reports from the night of Aug. 19 offer conflicting narratives about exactly when and why police left the scene.

Earlier that night, the reports document that Sheila Harris walked into the New Haven Police Department headquarters at 1 Union Ave. after a fight with Garvin.

Inside their Shelton Avenue home, according to what Harris told police, Garvin had pulled out his gun to threaten Harris. When Harris withdrew her own (legally-owned) gun in response, Garvin snatched it from her hand. He stormed out of the house, then returned soon afterwards to resume their fight. He pulled Harris’ chain jewelry from around her neck and attempted to break her glasses. Harris bore scratches on her face and neck from the altercation, according to the cops. 

Officer Jaymie Morales called Garvin, who first denied he had even seen Harris that day, then accused her of cheating on him, then said he’d been looking for Harris but hadn’t been able to find her. 

Afterwards, Garvin called Detective Orlando Crespo, upset that ​“this fucking bitch Sheila” was accusing him of stealing her gun, according to Crespo’s report of the incident. Crespo wrote that he heard someone in the background saying she would call the police. Crespo said he told Garvin to leave the house and contact the police. Garvin hung up. He attempted to call Crespo twice later that night, but the detective didn’t answer.

Meanwhile, the police reports indicate that Harris declined medical attention and gave permission to the police to search her home. 

Five officers, including Morales, convened with Sheila at her home, where they met family members including Mercedes. The police searched the house and didn’t find either Garvin or Sheila’s guns. 

Officer Morales wrote that he spoke to someone, ostensibly one of Garvin and Harris’ kids, who said that Garvin had threatened earlier that the kids ​“will not have a father and mother soon.”

This is when, according to Taubes and Mercedes, the police should have stayed with Sheila. 

The police reports offer slightly different accounts of the chronology leading up to the officers’ departure from the house.

Morales wrote that Sheila left her home to stay at a friend’s house, and that officers remained at the house for about 10 minutes after her departure until they were dispatched to a house five blocks away.

According to Mercedes, her mom never left the house.

Officer Joshua Hurlburt merely wrote that Sheila ​“informed” the officers of plans to spend the night at a friend’s place, prompting the five officers to leave the house. Two of the other responding officers wrote that they left the house without giving a particular reason or indicating that Sheila left.

According to Mercedes, Garvin had been waiting for the cops to leave. Moments after they departed, Garvin walked back inside the house and then walked out front. He started smashing the windows of Sheila’s car. 

Shortly after leaving, according to the police reports, the officers who searched Harris’ home were dispatched to a house five blocks away, responding to reports of a man entering that house with a gun and a woman screaming for help.

Two of the officers wrote that they confirmed the address with the NHPD dispatcher in order to make sure that the house in question wasn’t Sheila Harris’ home. Initially, dispatch responded that the house five blocks away was the correct address.

The officers reconvened there and searched the house, finding nothing of concern. Then, Officer Dylan Carleton wrote, Dispatch sent an update that they had been sent to the wrong house, and that Sheila Harris’ address was indeed the subject of the call.

Meanwhile, Garvin was destroying Sheila’s car. Mercedes said she believes this was a calculated attempt to lure Sheila out of the house — and it worked. 

Sheila rushed outside to see what had happened to her car, according to Mercedes. 

Garvin pulled out his gun and shot Sheila. Immediately, Mercedes retrieved her own legally-owned gun from the safe inside her house and rushed outside. Police reports indicate that she saw Garvin standing over Sheila, pointing the gun at Sheila’s head. Mercedes shot at Garvin before he could pull the trigger again.

The police department’s ShotSpotter gunshot detection technology picked up on the gunfire, and police hurried back to the address. Officers performed CPR on Sheila and Garvin, who both died shortly afterwards at Yale New Haven Hospital.

The Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached 24/7 by calling or texting (888) 774‑2900, or by visiting https://www.ctsafeconnect.org/.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached by calling 1 (800) 799-SAFE (7233), texting ​“START” to 88788, or visiting https://www.thehotline.org/. Further resources on safety can be found here.