Police are asking people who know anything about a murder that took place in the Hill early Friday morning to call them at 203 – 946-6304.
Officers headed to Congress Avenue and West Street in response to an anonymous call at 12:46 a.m. from someone who heard “numerous shots,” police said. The cops found 53-year-old Derrick Suggs there; he’d been shot in the chest. He died later at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He has a history of drug arrests, according to the police; as of mid-Friday, the motive remained unclear.
The Major Crimes Unit has initiated an investigation.
In other crime news, according to police spokesman Officer Joe Avery:
Cops chased a 19-year-old man who had a gun into a Charles Street house around 6:45 p.m. Thursday. They found him hiding in the basement. (He doesn’t live there.) And with the help of a police canine, Officer Steven Silk found the gun, for which the man didn’t have a permit. The man was charged with first-degree burglary, un-permitted firearm possession, and interfering.
Four and a half hours later, two men tried to rob a man on Dixwell Avenue and fired a shot at him.
He Wasn’t Shot, After All
Paul Bass Photo
A call came in Thursday afternoon: blood on the steps of a house on Henry Street.
A man told his mother he’d been shot in the face.
The call sent police rushing to the house across the street and few doors down from Butta J’s bar shortly after 4 p.m. Thursday. Police taped off the crime scene to preserve evidence.
“When we got here,” top Dixwell cop Sgt. Donnie Harrison (at left in above photo) said at the scene, “he was gone. But we do have a blood trail.” Blood was in the foyer and on the steps leading upstairs in the multi-family house.
Over in the Dwight neighborhood, a woman was speeding through lights. The cops stopped her at Orchard and Elm. She said her son — who was in the car, and bleeding from the face — told her he’d been shot. The cops called for paramedics, who took the man, in his early 20s, the rest of the way to the Hospital of St. Raphael.
It later turned out the man hadn’t been shot. He hadn’t been knifed, said top Dwight cop Lt. Ray Hassett. The man did have cuts to his face; he might have broken his jaw. The man had been visiting the house on Henry and gotten into a fight, Hassett said.
Officer James Baker (at right in above photo) had been called to the same Henry Street house at 11:30 a.m. Thursday. He said two women were involved in a domestic dispute. He said that dispute was unrelated to the bloody call later that afternoon.
Crime Map
Police got three calls reporting a stolen automobile at Abate Apizza at 129 Wooster St. Thursday morning.
Click here for a list of emergency calls for major incidents on Thursday, March 17. Click on the image below to see those crimes placed on a city-wide map.
NHPD
For block-by-block year-to-date crime info, and daily crime maps, check the Independent’s crime log.
FIVE shootings in ONE day? It's going to be a long, hot summer, folks . . . .