Thomas Breen photo
Officers Tyler Camp and Justin Julianelle: Suspected drive-by shooters fled. With the right conditions on the road, they pursued.
Nine shots had just been fired on a Wednesday afternoon in Fair Haven, and neighbors who called 911 identified the suspects as two men in masks on a three-wheeled motorcycle.
Which is exactly what and who Officer Justin Julianelle saw as he rushed to Blatchley Avenue and Lombard Street in his cruiser.
As the three-wheeler suspected shooters fled from Fair Haven to Wooster Square to Fair Haven again to the Annex, Julianelle followed — but he didn’t “chase.” That’s an important distinction in New Haven these days.
As he drove, Julianelle was thinking about the department’s safety-focused prohibition on car chases, and about the ongoing dangers presented by these two men on wheels who likely had a gun.
The pursuit wound up paying off. And city police seized not one gun, but two.
Julianelle and fellow city police Officer Tyler Camp, along with a handful of other in-pursuit New Haven cops, ultimately caught up with the suspected shooters off of Townsend Avenue near Fort Wooster Park less than 10 minutes after the shooting took place on Wolcott Street.
When the suspects jumped off their three-wheeler and tried to flee on foot, officers caught up with both — the driver a 36-year-old, the passenger a 17-year-old — and recovered two guns, one a ghost gun and another a Ruger with an obliterated serial number.
Police subsequently charged the 36-year-old with a half-dozen felonies and misdemeanors, including criminal possession of a firearm, illegal possession of a weapon in a motor vehicle, carrying a pistol without a permit, illegal possession of a large capacity magazine, interfering with an officer, reckless driving, and engaging police in a pursuit. State court records show that he has been released from custody on a $200,000 bond, has not yet entered any pleas for those charges, and has his next court date in this case on Oct. 26. Assistant Police Chief David Zannelli told the Independent that the 17-year-old was also criminally charged because of the seriousness of the offense.
From one of the police cruiser dash cameras, showing when the suspected shooters jumped off of their three-wheeler "Can-Am" as police pursued on foot.
During a recent interview with the Independent, Julianelle and Camp described the shooting response, three-neighborhood-spanning pursuit, and arrests that played out during that Wednesday earlier this month, on Sept. 6.
They spoke about how a uniquely fortuitous set of circumstances — including quick communication between the community, dispatchers, and police; trust by police supervisors in their officers to respond capably and safely; relatively light traffic on weekday rush-hour residential streets; and the relatively slow speed of a three-wheel motorcycle with an apparently flat tire that the operator struggled to drive — all allowed police to engage in a type of pursuit that is typically called off early for safety reasons, and then to take two guns off the street.
“We do say ‘No’ to chases 95 percent of the time,” Assistant Chief Zannelli told the Independent while praising the officers involved in this case. “The situation here is that we had a violent fleeing felon and the danger to the community was greater to them if they were let go.”
Zannelli said the officers involved in this incident — including Julianelle and Camp and Sgt. Frank Sanchez and Officer Brian Watrous — correctly recognized that the three-wheeler was moving relatively slowly at around 25 to 30 miles per hour, that traffic was light, and that the threat of another drive-by shooting, when all “balanced” together, justified the pursuit that led to the arrests and gun seizures.
According to the Independent’s interviews with Julianelle, Camp, and Zannelli, and the Independent’s review of Camp’s Sept. 6 incident report and four relevant clips of officer-worn body camera footage, here’s what happened on that day:
On Wednesday, Sept. 6 at around 5:25 p.m., a ShotSpotter alert identified nine rounds fired on Wolcott Street between Poplar and Ferry, followed by two rounds on Poplar.
Some officers, including Camp, a 28-year-old from Monroe who has been with the New Haven Police Department for roughly four years, responded to the scene of the shooting.
Julianelle, a 27-year-old from Branford who has also been a city police officer for roughly four years, found himself heading instead to Blatchley and Lombard where Sgt. Sanchez said the three-wheeler shooting suspects were heading.
Sure enough, Julianelle saw the “Can-Am” three-wheel vehicle with two masked men onboard, and his sergeant in pursuit.
The three-wheeler “took the corner kind of sharp” onto Main Street, leaving Julianelle best positioned to pursue. Which he did, as the suspected shooters continued driving through the neighborhood.
As the three-wheeler headed from Main Street to Castle to James and then over to William Street in the Wooster Square neighborhood, driving at around 25 miles per hour and going sometimes the wrong way down one-way streets, a few thoughts passed through Julianelle’s head.
One: “It seemed like they didn’t know where they were going,” as they kept driving in circles.
Two: “They were going slow, like they didn’t know how to ride the motorcycle,” or like something was wrong with the vehicle itself. (Zannelli later said that the three-wheeler had a flat tire.)
“It was a perfect scenario” to pursue, as there wasn’t a lot of traffic, Julianelle said, and given how serious and dangerous the crime that was just committed on Wolcott was. “I gave it a lot of space” so as not to be right on the tail of the three-wheeler, he said. “You’ve got to be careful.” But he continued to follow them through Fair Haven and Wooster Square, and his supervisor didn’t call off the chase.
Camp picked up with the pursuit a few blocks later, following the three-wheeler along Chapel Street through Fair Haven, over the Ferry Street bridge, and down to Townsend Avenue.
He said that the three-wheeler was moving slowly enough on Townsend that the sergeant was able to pull his vehicle in front of it to slow it down even further.
Moving at only 5 miles per hour, the three-wheeler operators decided to jump off their vehicle and flee on foot.
Camp said that he and a handful of fellow officers quickly caught up with the driver and the passenger.
They found one gun dropped by one of the riders soon after they fled the three-wheeler. Camp found another gun tucked into the waistband of the 17-year-old he apprehended.
Julianelle and Camp both praised the speed and clarity with which information was related: from the 911 calls by Fair Haven neighbors immediately after the Wolcott Street shooting, to the dispatchers’ relays to the responding police officers. They said police were able to respond to the scene less than 30 seconds after the shooting took place — a rare occurrence. They were also able to quickly find the suspects matching the exact same description provided by the 911 callers — even rarer.
And they were able to pursue the three-wheeler at a relatively slow speed, across multiple neighborhoods, and catch and arrest them and seize their guns, all in less than 10 minutes.
“The trust [the police supervisors had] for us to allow us to do that, to allow it to transpire, it means a lot,” Julianelle said. A lot of times these types of pursuits are called off early, for understandable safety reasons. But not here. “It doesn’t happen often” that community, dispatch, police all work so in sync and quickly and smoothly, Camp said. But here it did, and it paid off.
Julianelle reflected further on why this pursuit was worth engaging in — while so many others, justifiably, are not.
“They were going slow enough and traffic was open enough,” he repeated. And, going through his mind the whole time was the knowledge that these two men were likely just seconds prior involved in a drive-by shooting. So they likely had one or more guns on them now, as they were fleeing through the neighborhoods on a weekday afternoon. So they could shoot again and — unlike in the first instance, where a car but no people were hit by the bullets — cause some real human harm.
In that situation, Julianelle said, “I was comfortable. I know my skills as a driver.” But it’s also okay for police officers to peel off if they feel like their pursuit could put themselves or others at danger.
Ultimately, he and Camp concluded, “the community shouldn’t have to be terrorized” by shots fired at any time of day, especially on a weekday afternoon in the middle of a residential neighborhood.
“I know I’m not OK with that,” Camp said.
Zannelli praised the officers for their “heroic” response, and stressed that, while pursuits are generally prohibited, “the situation presented in such a way that the risk was greater to the community if were to allow these individuals to go free.” He applauded the officers for apprehending the suspects with “the minimal use of force,” and described the incident as resulting in a “significant arrest.”
I understand innocent until proven guilty, but I am not happy that the 36 yr is out on bond without another court appearance for a month. I don't think he had an illegal gun with a large capacity magazine because it's his hobby. We have to balance risk to the public with fairness to the accused.