Alleged Murderer Caught; Victim’s Mom Relives ​“Worst Nightmare”

With tears streaming down her face, Krystal Woodhouse thanked police for arresting the man who allegedly murdered her son — and pleaded with anyone listening to come forward, talk to the cops, and do their part to help stop the cycle of violence that took her first-born two and a half years ago.

Woodhouse expressed that gratitude and offered that community plea Thursday afternoon during a press conference at police headquarters at 1 Union Ave.

Police Chief Karl Jacobson, Assistant Chief Bertram Ettienne, Mayor Justin Elicker, a top fellow cops and detectives convened that presser to announce that, on June 2, police served a warrant for the arrest of a 25-year-old Hartford man for the Nov. 17, 2020 murder of 24-year-old Tylee Bellamy on Grace Street in the Cedar Hill neighborhood.

Ettienne said the murder suspect — who is currently incarcerated in Hartford and awaiting trial for unrelated charges — killed Bellamy during an attempted robbery of a gun. Police were able to close the case two and a half years after Bellamy’s shooting death thanks to the work of city police Det. Steven Cunningham, collaboration with the Hartford Police Department, and a review of relevant social media. 

While top cops offered few details on Thursday on what exactly led to police securing a warrant for this murder arrest, Tylee’s mom Krystal Woodhouse and grandmother Lorraine Bellamy spoke candidly and with tearful emotion about the life-shattering pain that came from their loved one’s violent death.

“My worst nightmare is burying one of my sons,” Woodhouse said. And that’s exactly what she did two and a half years ago. She said she had Tylee at just 15 years old, that she had always been close with him, that his birth had helped turn her life around from her own ​“horrible” childhood. Tylee has left behind four kids, she said, who now will never get to grow up with their father.

“This right here is not what I wanted for them,” she said through tears.

She urged anyone listening — parents, children, New Haveners from all wakes of life — to come forward and talk to the police if they know about someone who has committed violence, and especially if they have taken another’s life.

“Everybody needs to be held accountable,” she said.

“Tylee was my oldest grandson,” Lorraine Bellamy said. ​“I talked to him every day. I just pray and I just wish that people would do better. You raise your kids and you hope they live a full life.” And it’s just so terrible when that isn’t the case.

“I thank God that they found justice for Tylee.”

Thursday’s press conference took place one day after police officials held a separate press conference with family members Allen ​“Shawny” Freeman, announcing that they had arrested a 22-year-old man for allegedly killing Freeman during a robbery on Bassett Street on Nov. 6, 2020.