Thomas Breen Photo
Cop cars outside on East Street Tuesday following suspect's death.
Nora Grace-Flood photo
Stacey Wezenter outside her third-floor apartment and beside her still-broken door.
A 35-year-old East Street resident suspected of involvement in child pornography was found dead in his apartment Tuesday five days after police surprise-searched his apartment — as part of a raid that began with cops busting down the wrong door and handcuffing an innocent neighbor.
Police Chief Karl Jacobson said the man was found unresponsive in his second floor apartment in East Rock Tuesday after a person called the department to report his death around 8 a.m.
“It appears to be a suicide, but police are still investigating,” Jacobson said.
Cops executed a search warrant of the man’s home on East Street last Thursday in order to examine his electronic devices as part of a child pornography investigation. Jacobson did not provide additional details about any alleged offenses. The man was not arrested or taken into custody on Thursday. “It was an open investigation, so he knew he was going to be arrested,” Jacobson commented.
The raid itself took a wrong turn early Thursday morning when members of the city’s special victims unit invaded the wrong apartment before entering the intended location.
Stacey Wezenter, who lived on the floor above the now deceased man, said that she was woken up at 6 a.m. on Thursday by a crew of cops breaking down her door, pointing guns and flashlights in her direction and handcuffing her — before they realized they had, in fact, gone to the wrong apartment. They had intended to take down the door of Wezenter’s downstairs neighbor instead.
Chief: "We're Very Sorry ... It's Traumatic"
Chief Karl Jacobson: “We’re very sorry that that happened to her, and we’re gonna do everything possible to make it right."
Jacobson confirmed that police did mistakenly go to Wezenter’s apartment and handcuff her before ultimately moving forward with the search at the correct address one floor below. He could not at this point confirm any other details of what took place that morning.
“We’re very sorry that that happened to her and we’re gonna do everything possible to make it right,” he said. “It’s a traumatic thing.”
Following Tuesday’s apparent suicide, Jacobson said, he has ordered an internal affairs investigation to broadly examine how that search warrant was carried out and whether there was negligence on the part of any officers involved.
“She [Wezenter] will be interviewed about how she was treated and everything else,” Jacobson said of the pending investigation. Among other questions, he said, the investigation will consider whether the officers erred in their execution of the search warrant or whether the listing for the suspect’s address could have been incorrect, as well as whether or not the suspect should have been taken into custodial arrest.
As for the misdirected apartment raid, “I don’t know the full details,” Jacobson said. “Obviously it was a mistake.”
He said that Wezenter “was handcuffed and within minutes was un-handcuffed.” Other than the error of location, ensuring enough cops were on scene to secure a perimeter of the building and handcuffing those in the targeted apartment would be in line with standard search protocol, he said.
"They Knew They Messed Up Big Time"
Wezenter, meanwhile, told the Independent about what she recalls having taken place.
The week of trauma and tragedy, she said, unofficially kicked off last Wednesday night as she lay in bed watching the final episode of the HBO Max series Euphoria, in which a child is shot after police rush into a drug dealer’s home and open fire.
“That’s what I went to sleep to — only to be woken up at 6 a.m. to the New Haven Police Department Special Victims unit busting my door open, screaming that they have a search warrant. It was straight out of a movie.”
Wezenter said that she first heard cops shouting, “Clear! Clear!” as they made their way through her apartment. She got up and began walking down the hallway while her children, aged 4 and 20, remained asleep in their respective bedrooms.
“They see me coming down the hall,” she said. Suddenly she was eye to eye with a slew of guns and flashlights pointed her way. She said she thought there were at least eight cops in her place.
“They start putting me against the wall, handcuffing me. I’m like, ‘What is going on? Why am I being arrested?’ I’m crying, sobbing.”
“They just keep saying, ‘We’ll explain momentarily ma’am,’” she said. She said they kept pressing: “Where’s the man in the house? Where’s the man?”
Wezenter responded: “I’m like, ‘There is no fucking man! What are you talking about!’”
Then one of the cops gave the name of the specific man they were looking for.
“I say, ‘That’s my downstairs neighbor.’ They say, ‘We got the wrong apartment.’”
At that point, she said, the cops uncuffed her and began to apologize profusely. “They knew they messed up big time.”
According to Wezenter, the cops then proceeded down the stairs to the second floor, where they searched her neighbor’s apartment and seized his computer and other electronics.
They told her to call them if she would like to be connected to mental health support through Yale. They told her they would work with her landlord to make sure her busted door got fixed. They told her they had reason to believe her neighbor might be a “child predator.”
A couple of hours later, Wezenter dropped off her son at school and began preparing for the upcoming Easter weekend, during which she would be hosting her extended family for dinner. She received calls from the cops who had wrongly flooded her apartment, she said, as well as a voicemail from Assistant Police Chief Bertram Ettienne, referencing the incident.
She didn’t respond to any of the police officers. She was trying to independently think through next steps: How would she go about filing a complaint concerning the raid? Should she try to file a lawsuit?
Two years ago, Wezenter told the Independent, she was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and high anxiety stemming from a violent relationship she has since left. The raid was enough to get her head spinning; each time she walks by her broken door, she said, she has visions of the cops running through her apartment and fixates on the fear of physical harm being done to herself or her children.
She was also worried about her downstairs neighbor, with whom she had always had positive interactions. What had he done? she wondered. And how is he doing?
On Tuesday, she texted this reporter to report that she had woken up to cops in her apartment once again — who told her that her neighbor had killed himself.
“I almost brought him some Easter dinner leftover last night. I was going to tell him that he’s innocent until proven guilty,” she said. Instead, she fell asleep — the first full night’s rest she said she had gotten since the previous week sent her into spirals.
“He was such a sweet guy. Always positive. A glass half-full kinda guy. It’s really sad regardless of what he may or may not have done,” she said.
“It shouldn’t have ended this way. I feel like small acts of compassion may have changed things. Maybe I could’ve saved him.”
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