Police Monday said they figured out who shot a 27-year-old woman in the thigh on County Street a week ago, and why.
The original account of the shooting sounded odd. Or at least it contained some missing pieces. The woman’s boyfriend was out in the car with their three children when someone came and shot her and fled.
Police tracked down the gunman a week later. They arrested him, along with the boyfriend.
Here’s what they found out, and how, according to police spokesman David Hartman:
The shooting took Jan. 31. Police subsequently heard from a woman in New Milford, Connecticut, about a conversation she’d had with a man she had dated. The man told her during the date “that he’d recently shot a woman in New Haven. The woman was no longer interested in continuing the date and got the cops involved after the man allegedly stole some of her cash.”
New Milford cops picked up the man — interrupting him during an attempted burglary.
He copped to the New Haven shooting — but had a back story he wanted to tell: He “said he was instructed to perpetrate the shooting as an initiation into a gang. He said the gun was provided by the father of the victim’s three children, all under the age of five years. The continuing interview worried detectives that the victim may have not been the only one [the father] wanted harmed.”
Cops found the father in the Hill in the early hours of Sunday morning and arrested him. They charged him with conspiracy to commit assault in the first degree and conspiracy to commit home invasion. They charged the confessed hit man, who’s a convicted felon, with assault in the first degree, unlawful discharge of a firearm, criminal possession of a firearm, home invasion and conspiracy to commit assault in the first degree and home invasion.
“Detectives along with members of the shooting task force worked diligently on this case, especially this weekend as the investigation developed rather quickly and required us to work around the clock to bring it to fruition,” said Lt. Otoniel Reyes, head of the police department’s detective bureau. The state’s attorney’s office worked alongside detectives “during the late night hours and made possible the expeditious arrest of the individuals who orchestrated and carried this shooting.
