Violent Stretch Weighs Heavily On Year’s 1st Alder Meeting

Prayers, tears, and a collective sense of grief hung over the first Board of Alders meeting of the year as local legislators mourned a brutal few weeks of gun violence that closed out 2022 and began 2023.

That was the scene Tuesday night in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall during the first meeting in 2023 of the full Board of Alders.

As they looked ahead to another year of legislating, alders from opposite sides of the city took their seats with the weight of recent murders at the front of their minds.

During the so-called ​“points of personal privilege” section at the end of Tuesday’s meeting, Fair Haven Alder Jose Crespo stood up to speak on the the subject of gun violence. He said that three times in the last week, he’s heard of gunshots fired in his ward — ​“some blocks from my home.”

One of those bullets took the life of Dontae Myers, a 23-year-old and father of three who on Jan. 1 became New Haven’s first homicide victim of the year.

Crespo urged his fellow alders to ​“keep the city in our prayers.” He lamented that ​“during these hard times, people are still feeling a need to retaliate.”

Throughout the night, West Rock/West Hills Alder Honda Smith received a whir of congratulations on being named the Independent’s ​“New Havener of the Year” for 2022. Smith smiled at these remarks. But she couldn’t stop thinking of Joshua Vazquez, a 16-year-old who was murdered while biking in her ward in December.

Smith knew Vazquez well, having mentored him through a Youth Ambassador program in her neighborhood. She grieved with his family. ​“It was hard,” she told this reporter when asked before the meeting about the end of the year for her. 

Board of Alders President and West River Alder Tyisha Walker-Myers conducted the night’s proceedings as methodically as usual. 

After all the agenda items had been voted on and her colleagues had offered their ​“personal privilege” remarks, Walker-Myers asked the room to stand for a moment of silence in honor of Dontae, whose mother is like a sister to the board president and whose brother was shot and killed at only 18 years old in January 2020. 

She finished the sentence in a sob, and it became clear that Tuesday was far from an ordinary day for her and for several of her colleagues.

When a motion was offered for the meeting to adjourn, Walker-Myers responded with the usual words, though she was still in tears: ​“Discussion, seeing none, the meeting is adjourned.”