(Updated) Vlad Voinov had a lot of responsibilities to juggle: a new house, a new semester beginning at UConn, a political website to edit, a job at Blockbuster. He also predicted his violent death in New Haven’s gang underworld.
Voinov’s body was found Thursday around 6 p.m. in a first-floor apartment at 353 Poplar St. (Previous story here.) He was shot in the chest. The murder remains under investigation.
Voinov didn’t live at 353 Poplar, which had a reputation as a drug house. He lived in Hamden, at 344 Lane St. Originally from Ukraine, he grew up in New Haven; he had just purchased the Hamden home on July 24 for $200,000.
As police try to solve the mystery of who killed Voinov and why, another mystery hangs over the case: how a young man with so much promise ended up a corpse on Poplar Street.
He appeared to live a double life — the successful student and legitimate jobholder, and a possible participant in the drug trade who boasted on Facebook of gang ties and the risks he ran of getting shot. Even in his gang pose, he took to the keyboard to try to hash out the political realities of the city that gave him opportunities as well as a ticket to a premature death.
“When an unidentified assailant pulls up and murks off on me, for whatever reason… “ Voinov wrote, “I won’t have any regrets.”
B.M.O.C.
“He was a good person. Well liked. Very smart. Very articulate. Very good with words. He had a lot of pull around” the University of Connecticut, said David Mondin. Modin went to UConn with Voinov and was his close friend. “He was just a great guy who brought
fun and love to many people’s lives.”
Voinov was 21. A UConn spokesman confirmed that Voinov was entering his senior year, as a political science major.
He also managed to accomplish a lot in a typical day. He worked at the Whalley Avenue Blockbuster video store in Westville for years, a supervisor said Tuesday. In addition to his classes at UConn, he had run for student body president, finishing third, according to Mondin. He edited a website called Inpolitically Correct.
“This paper’s sole goal shall be to promote a dialogue of subjects that have been driven from the realm of American politics with the simple term ‘politically incorrect,’” Voinov wrote in the site’s mission statement. “The term has become synonymous for racist, oppressive, insensitive. This cannot go on. The overuse of such derisive terms has only managed to stifle debate. It is high time for an intellectual dialogue, for free speech to depose the hypersensitivity that has usurped her throne.”
Mondin said that Voinov’s father, who worked at Yale and then for a local florist, passed away three months ago, leaving behind enough insurance money with which to buy the Hamden home. Voinov’s mother, who’d been separated from his father, returned to the family’s native Ukraine, according to Mondin.
Ivana Durbic (pictured) grew up with Voinov in upper Westville. They were both born abroad (in her case, Yugoslavia). They went to East Rock Middle School and High School in the Community together. They were on the same debate team, in the philosophy club. They went bowling at Amity Lanes.
Coming off her shift as a downtown coffee shop Tuesday, Durbic, who’s 20, said she’s “still in shock” at Voinov’s death — not necessarily by how he died as much as by the fact that he’s gone. He was a big presence in his friends’ lives, she said.
“I was still hoping he’d come on Facebook and say, ‘Hey guys, I was just kidding.’ It was the kind of thing he’d do.”
“He was a really good friend,” Durbic said. “He was one of the smartest people I ever met in my life. Everyone had so much respect for him because he was so smart and so witty.”
She remembered high school debates and bull sessions in which Voinov would press an argument and never surrender.
“He used to tell us, ‘Everything is a choice.’ We’d say, ‘Come on, Vlad. Breathing’s not a choice.’ He said, ‘Yes it is.’ We’d sit there for 40 minutes. He’d never give up.”
On the UConn Storrs campus, Voinov was the first person fellow student Anthony Wasley remembers knowing by name in the Tower Dining Hall. “He was extremely social,” Wasley recalled in an email message. “He did many things around UConn such as his newspaper, being a member of Dramatic PAWS, and running for student gov. I recognized and tipped my hat to the things he did; I wish I could have told him how much I appreciated it.”
Sarah Jane Boucher, another friend, described being “blown away by his intellect and drive. And he was funny beyond all belief… Vlad was revolutionary person both intellectually and emotionally. He cared deeply for people and society. He strived to create a positive and fruitful environment both on campus and everywhere he went.”
A Death Foreseen
Voinov openly boasted on his Facebook page of having gang ties back in New Haven. Police are looking into reports that he was dealing drugs in the Poplar Street house where his body was found.
In one Facebook post he prophesied his possible death on the streets.
“I realized that I’m not going anywhere. I love New Haven. And I’m going to succeed so that I can see my town prosper, to the fullest extent. But my time-frame to achieve this in my life is limited. And as one’s personal prosperity becomes greater, so does the risk of them having their life taken. New Haven is the town that raised me, so that’s what I’m gonna do for it…” Voinov wrote.
“I understand that I’m going to keep striving towards this, until one night when an unidentified assailant pulls up and murks off on me, for whatever reason. And I won’t
have any regrets towards it, because as long as I’m pursuing my agenda, it doesn’t matter when it happens, because I’ll have the personal gratification of knowing that I’ve led a fulfilling life. And I wouldn’t even hate the guy for doing it. Fuck, I’d finally find solace in death. All I’d want is for my friends to retaliate, if you’d find out who.”
Voinov wrote in the post that he “represent[s] the Tre,” the longstanding New Haven gang centered around Kensington Street that more recently is believed to have hooked up with the national Bloods. “I’ll earn my own stripes, if I have to… It’s 3X for me. But I’m not worried. Rather, I should celebrate… “
He closed by declaring that “TrillE niggaz don’t die.” “TrillE” is a saying associated with the Bloods.
The reflections were prompted by an incident Voinov wrote of witnessing in Edgewood Park:
“On the last night before my return to campus from home, I was hanging out with one of my high school friends and his brother, who got stripes in the Ville. Around 11:30pm or so, we went up to smoke a blunt at a secluded recreational section of Edgewood park. Just as we were wrapping up the cypher, we heard a muffled gunshot blast and a screech of tires from down the block.
“‘Popscrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech!!!’ And then silence.
“We left the spot to return later on that night. Cops flooded the region, within a half-mile radius. Driving around, me and my boys noticed that the police were interrogating at least five households in the area. Maybe on unrelated leads, but nonetheless they swarmed the hood and had the block blocked-off within a half-hour or less.
“Apparently a guy pulled up to another guy in his car, on the Boulevard, and shot him several times. I only heard one. The news say that the 30-something-year-old victim died at YNHH, the next morning. Headshot.
“But it’s not anything new. These stories are every-day in my town to the point where it makes you wonder how it could possibly be the home of one of the world’s foremost ivy league collegiate institutions.
“But, more than anything, this incident just made me reflect on the grim reality of my American life. On Thanksgiving weekend and all throughout the holiday season, the violence doesn’t cease. According to my friends, it only intensifies. And that’s what I’m obliged to deal with.”
"...another mystery hangs over the case: how a young man with so much promise ended up a corpse on Poplar Street."
I wonder, if he were any other person that's been murdered over the last year, would there be this extensive story about his life? In no way do I say this to discount his death, which is unfortunate, however, he was a drug dealer and had ties to gangs as so many that have been killed in New Haven. Why is HIS story so important to the Independent? There were many killed before him that had promise. It seems as if we are glorifying his bad behavior.