Thomas Breen photo
Passengers leaving Union Station at 10:40 p.m. two hours after shooting.
Union Avenue blocked off with police and firefighters on scene after Wednesday night's shooting.
Michal, Monika, and Zofia Taratajcio, visiting New Haven from Poland: "Suddenly we noticed police running up and down with their guns and dogs.”
Union Station was locked down and passengers kept on board for more than an hour Wednesday night after a shooting took place on a platform.
Here’s what happened, according to officials:
A passenger on a Metro North train from Grand Central arriving at Track 14 was disembarking around 8:40 p.m. when he was shot.
A group of passengers on the train had been involved in a dispute, according to Police Chief Karl Jacobson and Mayor Justin Elicker.
“It appears that that dispute happened on the train,” the mayor said. Those individuals got off the train and “one individual shot the other individual a few times. That individual, the victim, is in the hospital now in critical condition.”
Police arrived on the scene and kept passengers arriving on several different trains on board while they looked for the shooter. Other trains approaching New Haven were stopped en route. Jacobson said that there were two MTA officers and two state police officers at Union Station at the time of the shooting. “They responded immediately.”
An ambulance crew took the victim to the hospital, where he was reported in critical condition.
No other injuries were reported.
Around 9:40 p.m., after police determined based on surveillance video that the shooter had fled the area, they began escorting passengers off the trains and reopening the station. Passengers were still being escorted out after 10 p.m.
The shooter remained at large. Police were also seeking a second suspect who had accompanied the shooter and allegedly hopped on a bus out of Union Station.
Mayor Elicker and Chief Jacobson at around 10:15 p.m.
Sam Owusu was coming from his home in Bridgeport to New Haven to work an overnight shift at the Amazon warehouse in North Haven when he found himself stuck on the train and told not to disembark.
“It was terrible. They kept on giving us news we can’t go to New Haven because someone had been shot” on the train before the one he was on, he said. He added he was “relieved” to finally get off the train an hour later, even though he was late for work.
A family of three from northwest Poland — Monika and Michal Taratajcio daughter Zofia — arrived at Union Station before the commotion began.
The family had spent 10 days in the U.S. traveling to Niagara Falls and the White Mountains in New Hampshire. They dropped off their rental car at Union Station and were waiting in the lobby area to board an Amtrak train to New York, where they planned to stay at a hotel before catching a flight home on Thursday.
Instead of boarding their train, they were stuck in the station for over an hour, sitting by the stairs.
“Suddenly we noticed police running up and down with their guns and dogs,” Monika Taratajcio said.
“We were a little bit surprised,” her husband added. They booked a bus ticket to get to New York to keep their plans.
Yale law student Corey Kahn.
Yale law student Corey Kahn took an Amtrak from D.C. to New Haven. The train got in at 8:55 p.m.; he was kept on board until after 10. At first he didn’t know why passengers were not allowed off the train, he said. Then he heard over intercom a report about an “active shooter” in New Haven. He said he and his fellow passengers were terrified.
DOT Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto.
The MTA is heading up the investigation along with the Connecticut State police. New Haven police are actively assisting as well.
Amtrak reported that as of 9:59 p.m. it was still suspending its rail traffic in the New Haven area because of the “police activity.” State transportation Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto told the Independent at 10:50 p.m. that all trains were back in operation and will run the rest of the night as scheduled. He did not anticipate delays in the morning as a result of the incident.
Parking authority maintenance worker Justin Clark, waiting to find out what happened soon after arriving for his overnight cleaning shift at Union Station at around 9:50.
Thomas Breen Photos
Firefighters on the scene on a blocked off Union Ave.
Democratic mayoral challenger and retired police sergeant Shafiq Abdussabur was on one of the dozens of people on the scene outside of Union Station at around 10 p.m. His campaign sent out an email comment at 10:36 p.m., which read in part: “Sadly, while our city has become another headline to this act of unthinkable violence, we are forced to reckon with an unfortunate truth: what should be unthinkable is not even uncommon. It is surreal to be standing here outside a perimeter established around an active shooting while fireworks go off in the background. We live in a nation that has become numb to the cost of unchecked gun violence, but here in the city of New Haven, we do not accept that this is just the way it is.”
Shame on Shafiq for putting out an email claiming there was an “active shooter” incident at Union Station yesterday evening.
I have literally woken up just now to the specter of an unprovoked mass shooting in my City, — only that’s not at all what happened.
Do Shafiq and Gage Frank even know what an “active shooter” situation is? Or do they know and just not care as they try to make political hay out of this?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_shooter
“Active shooter or active killer describes the perpetrator of a type of mass murder marked by rapidity, scale, randomness, and often suicide. The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines an active shooter as "one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.", excluding self-defense, gang or drug violence, crossfire, and domestic disputes. The United States Department of Homeland Security defines an active shooter as "an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area; in most cases, active shooters use firearms and there is no pattern or method to their selection of victims."