“He Is Our Brother Officer”

Four city police officers arrived at Dixwell Avenue and Henry Street Monday night prepared to use their new training in how to apply tourniquets to save the life of another gunshot victim.

They didn’t realize this victim was one of their own — Capt. Anthony Duff.

At a brief Wednesday afternoon press conference on the third floor of police headquarters at 1 Union Ave., Interim Police Chief Otoniel Reyes introduced the two sergeants and two officers who saved Duff’s life Monday night following a shooting that left a 46-year-old West Haven man dead and the high-ranking, off-duty cop injured. 

Those city police officers are Sgts. Chris Cameron and Shayna Kendall and Officers Ramonel Torres and Joseph Perrotti. On Monday night, they got to put in action — on one of their own — the department’s recent training and equipment of all of its officers with tourniquets.

Torres and Cameron arrived at the scene first, followed by Kendall and Perrotti. Torres applied the first tourniquet to Duff’s left arm, just above his bicep. Perrotti, a trained medic with experience applying the lifesaving medical instrument, later put on a second above the original. The four then carried Duff to the ambulance, stuck on Dixwell Avenue, that ultimately ferried the injured captain to Yale New Haven Hospital’s emergency room at 20 York St.

“These officers represent the best of our department,” Reyes said. ​“These officers made it possible for Capt. Duff to be recovering as well as he did.”

Duff had witnessed the shooting taking place while off the clock, Reyes said, and had stopped to intervene to try to stop the violence and save the injured man’s life. ​“Capt. Duff turned a corner,” he said. ​“He live witnessed someone being shot, someone being murdered, and without hesitation, came to the aid of someone he didn’t know.”

Reyes emphasized that the officers simultaneously provided equal lifesaving support to Troy Clark, the West Haven man who ultimately died from his gunshot wounds. The suspect remains at large, Reyes said.

Torres said that he was first on the scene Monday night, and found Duff in the middle of the street.

“I didn’t realize it was him that was shot,” Torres said. After asking to see which other officer was on the scene with Duff, Torres quickly realized that Duff was alone, and off-duty.

“That’s when I realized he was bleeding from the top of his arm, by his left bicep.” He sat Duff down, and wound the tourniquet around his upper arm, just above his left bicep.

As Torres was trying to apply the tourniquet, he said, Cameron came over and coached him through it.

Kendall and Perrotti arrived soon thereafter and, Perrotti said, he applied a second tourniquet above Torres’ original.

“The ambulance was backed up on Dixwell,” Kendall said. The four officers decided that they didn’t have time to waste trying to redirect traffic, considering the severity of Duff’s injury.

“We carried Capt. Duff to the back of the ambulance and made a decision to go,” Kendall said. Since Perrotti is a registered nurse, she said, he had the skills necessary to tend to Duff as the ambulance driver rushed to the emergency room at 20 York St.

When she first realized that Duff, a fellow officer, had been shot, Kendall said, she thought, ​“Could it have been fatal? Is this going to be the last time that we were going to see Capt. Duff?”

“He is our brother officer,” she added. The officers’ response wasn’t just a matter of tending to a friend and colleague. It was also a matter of using their training as police officers to tend to the immediate needs of a gunshot victim, protect them, and get them to more intensive medical care.

“Your training kicks in,” she said, ​“and you do what you have to do to preserve the life.”