Probe, Prayers Target Shooting Retaliation

A group of young people, out for revenge for the killing of an 18-year-old, opened fire on a Maple Street house before speeding away in a car.

The murdered man’s 15-year-old brother was not in that car.

Chalk up that fact — along with the subsequent arrest of the four young people and the removal of two ​“ghost guns” from the streets — to the power of focused police work … and, perhaps, prayer.

Police officials discussed the Maple Street incident at a press conference held Thursday in recognition of National Gun Violence Awareness Day, to highlight the work they’re doing to try to stop the shootings and keep illegal firearms off the street. They reported seizing 18 illegal firearms and making 16 gun-related arrests in the past two weeks, actions they believe may have help cut short the cycle of retaliation.

Apostle Valerie Washington, meanwhile, discussed in an interview what was going through her mind when she wrapped her arm around the 15-year-old brother and prayed for him to avoid seeking retaliation — and why she thinks that helps make a difference, too.

That combination of law enforcement and community support, officials said, point the way for how the community can save lives and keep neighborhoods safe.

Focused Police Work

The press conference took place at police headquarters at 1 Union Ave.

Asst. Police Chief Karl Jacobson and Lt. Derek Werner described the shooting incident on Maple Street, which took place at 1:40 p.m. on Thursday, May 19. 

Police found four spent shell casings and two live rounds at the site after hearing about the shooting. They were able to obtain video footage showing three young men walking by the house, and two of them firing shots at it. Then they ran to a black Nissan Rogue, and the driver fled. 

Police caught up with the Nissan Rogue at 7 p.m. They recovered two ghost guns and arrested the three young men (one of them a minor) as well as a fourth person.

Jacobson said police concluded the shots were fired in retaliation for the shooting death four evenings earlier on South Genesee Street of 18-year-old Anthony Strother, a young man Jacobson and street outreach workers had tried to help straighten out his life after a prison stint. The fourth arrestee who had been in the Nissan Rogue was Strother’s girlfriend, Jacobson said.

The Maple Street incident didn’t involve anyone actually getting shot. The arrests mattered because they could help break a cycle of retaliation that was already beginning, Jacobson said.

They mattered also because they reflect successes the department’s shooting task force and intelligence units have had in focusing investigations on the small numbers of people involved in gun violence, Jacobson and Mayor Justin Elicker said. They noted that the city has seen four homicides through the first five months of the year, a drop from the pace that led to 25 homicides in all of 2021. It has recorded 34 nonfatal shootings so far, another drop from the pace that led to 111 in all of 2021.

The incident reflected the spread of ghost guns, which are showing up in crimes more and more nationwide. The guns, with parts ordered through phone apps, can be assembled at home, without needing to be registered and without serial numbers, noted Werner, who oversees the intelligence unit. And minors can more readily obtain them. He noted one popular model called ​“P80” or ​“Polymer 80.”

“The accessibility of ghost guns is off the charts,” Jacobson said. Counting the two weapons recovered on Maple Street, New Haven police have recovered 19 ghost guns already in 2022. At this time in 2021, the New Haven cops had confiscated one ghost gun, and confiscated 15 over the entire year, a number already exceeded five months into 2022.

Finding The Words

From the start, community leaders were concerned about retaliatory violence growing out of Anthony Strother’s homicide.

They chased and arrested a 17-year-old who’d brandished a gun during a loud fight during a vigil at the site a day after the killing, for instance.

At a second community vigil two days after the homicide, after official speeches were made, ministers and community leaders assembled with Strother’s family members on South Genesee Street.

Apostle Washington, the pastor of Upon This Rock Ministries, led a prayer for the family’s healing. She put her arm around Strother’s 15-year-old brother Jordan. She saw him fighting back tears.

Mid-way through the prayer, Washington paused, summoning inspiration. She didn’t have a script. She didn’t need a script. She knew what she needed to address next: the danger of retaliation.

“God, it’s OK. It’s OK for him to cry,” Washington prayed aloud, her eyes closed, her arm around Jordan’s shoulder as family members and city officials and others pressed close.

“We pray that when he is by himself, when he is in the bathroom, wherever he is by himself, he will begin to talk to you.

“Show him who you are. Show him your glory. … Touch him, father! Give him peace. Don’t let him grow angry. Don’t let him be angry in life. Father; do not allow him to even seek retaliation. He’s a good kid. God, this is a good kid!”

Two days later came the Maple Street gunfire incident. Police told the Independent that Jordan Strother was not involved in the incident or any others.

The following week, Washington reflected on the moment of prayer during a conversation on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program.

She said she had not necessarily intended to address the subject of retaliation. When she pauses, she said, ​“I‘m relying on the Lord to tell me what do I pray for.”

Some people are skeptical that prayer can actually stop someone from committing violence. Washington spoke about how recruiting people to church takes people off the street, engages them in constructive alternative activity. And in moments like that vigil on South Genesee, it enables members of the community to actually touch the people they want to keep alive. She asked Jordan Strother to hug her after that prayer that afternoon; he complied. ​“Sometimes when you hug, you can feel that comfort,” she said; it’s a way of communicating, ​“With this prayer, I’m with you.”

Washington, who grew up in the West Hills neighborhood, where her mom still lives, has conducted street prayer services there with congregants of her church.

“When there is a murder, people want retaliation,” she observed. ​“What grieves my heart the most — these are people’s children.”

It’s up to the community, including parents, to help keep the children alive by helping the police break the cycle of violence and retaliation, Washington said.

She spoke about a time she did that with her own son.

She came home in West Hills to find federal Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents at her door. They were looking for his son, to arrest him.

She had sent her son to Bangor, Maine, a decade earlier to get him out of New Haven, after he had become involved in illegal activity on Kensington Street. He enrolled in the Job Corps program there. But he eventually made connections that involved him in a New Haven-to-Bangor drug and gun-smuggling ring.

She didn’t know that at the time. But she knew that, since he had returned to New Haven, ​“he had money, but no job.”

So she asked the agents if she could call her son. She did, and asked him to surrender.

“I’m going to be with you. I need you to turn yourself in,” she told him. She remembered thinking: ​“I don’t want my son to be gunned down.” Her son surrendered peacefully. He cooperated with the authorities, she said, served time, and has now started rebuilding his life with a legitimate delivery business.

One life at a time. One day at a time.

“Everybody is somebody. Nobody should be left behind,” Washington said in the ​“Dateline” conversation. 

Click on the above video to watch her discuss her own path to the ministry after retiring from a custodial job at Yale, and the ways she believes the religious community can work with law enforcement and others to keep young people alive at a time of rising gun violence.

And click above to watch the police press conference.