Paul Bass Photo
Assistant Chief Archie Generoso, who supervises investigations, arrives on the scene.
(Updated) A young man’s condition was upgraded to stable at the Hospital of St. Raphael after someone shot him in the chest at the corner of Ellsworth Avenue and Chapel Street.
The incident happened around 4:30 p.m. Monday in the West River neighborhood.
At 10:30 p.m., police released the name of the victim: Lamar Nalley, an 18-year-old New Havener. He was originally listed in critical condition. Tuesday morning, Assistant Chief Archie Generoso said the man’s condition had stabilized somewhat and he hadn’t needed to go to the operating room.
Lt. Holly Wasilewski said the man was shot on the street and then found in a house two blocks away on Stanley Street. She said the investigation is in the very preliminary stages.
Wasilewski called it a “very serious shooting.”
Lts. Hassett & Wasilewski outside the home where the victim was found.
A call originally came in as a shooting at Chapel and the Boulevard. Lt. Ray Hassett started searching the area; a young man flagged him down in front of a house on Stanley Street near the corner of Boulevard, across from the Edgewood Park sundial.
“He’s in there! He’s in there!” the young man said.
“There” was the front porch of the victim’s family’s home. Hassett found the victim in a vestibule between an unlocked front door to the building and a locked door to the interior.
The man could talk but he was badly wounded, with at least bullet wound in the upper chest. The man appeared to be in his late teens or early 20s, according to Hassett.
Several neighbors said they heard between four and five shots. Four shell casings were found near the corner of Ellsworth and Chapel.
Neighbor Gary Woodson said he was on a second-floor porch talking to another neighbor when the gunshots rang out.
“I seen kids on the corner,” he said. “They scattered. They always hang on that corner.”
Another man who lives near the corner said first he heard one shot, “then I heard four follow after.”
As police waited for family members to come home, two neighbors, Kim Weston and Erica Sapp, watched from across the street. They described the victim’s household as “a working family” and as good neighbors who never caused trouble. Both the mother and father work; the mother is a nurse, they said.
“It’s a good block,” said Weston. “The problem” is the “that block”: the intersection of Ellsworth and Chapel (pictured), where the victim was found.
The victim, whose nickname is “Pop,” played point guard for the New Horizons school basketball team, the Purple Spartans, in the 2008 – 9 academic year.
Detectives and members of the department’s Bureau of Identification were gathering evidence Monday evening at two scenes: the shooting spot …
… and the family home where the victim was found.
It is real sad that this type of thing is starting to happen as the weather breaks. New Haven was doing so well when it came to the shooting and the killing. Bridgeport was taken over the lead spot. Senseless killing ANYWHERE is sad..