Kermit Carolina Photo
Ciera Jones, at right, with brother Carl Jones and mentor/teacher Demetria McMillan at the siblings’ 2017 Hillhouse graduation.
A 22-year-old woman shot Monday on Truman Street, named Ciera Jones, has died from her injuries.
“CeeCee” Jones had been shot in the head Monday between 2:30 and 3:30 p.m. while gathered with a group of young adults on a walkway at the side of her family’s house across the street from a neighborhood community garden. Jones lived in the house with her mother and brother. She was also a close relative of a young man shot to death last year in Hamden.
Jones was taken to the hospital following the shooting and put on life support. She succumbed to her injuries on Wednesday, according to multiple people familiar with the case.
Police acted fast in response to Monday’s shooting. Within hours, across town on Lenox Street, they seized a stolen vehicle that is believed to be connected to the shooting.
They also went looking for someone who had left the scene of the shooting by the time they had arrived. They were informed that this person may have been shot as well. They found the person within hours, nearby on Vernon Street. It turned out he had not been shot. But the interaction led police to obtain a search warrant and seize a gun. They believe this may have prevented a reprisal shooting.
Police have not determined whether or not Jones was the intended target of the shooting.
Outreach Worker: She Took Friend’s Homicide Hard
The late Ciera Jones, who looked young for her age.
Jones’ death hit street outreach worker William “Juneboy” Outlaw particularly hard. Outlaw said he had worked with Jones through the street outreach program since she was in her mid-teens.
“She’s a very bright girl,” Outlaw said Wednesday evening, still speaking of Jones in the present tense.
He remembered her saying she wished she had a suit to wear to her Hillhouse High School prom. He bought her one.
The affection went both ways, Outlaw recalled.
“My mom died last year. She texted me every day for three weeks straight: ‘You OK?’ “Be strong.’ ‘I’m here if you need me.’ ‘I love you.’
“That touched me. That’s staying with me right now.”
Jones was the aunt of Kaymar Tanner, who was shot dead last summer in Hamden at the age of 22. (Read about that here.) After his death, she renamed her Facebook page after him.
“She took that really hard,” Outlaw recalled. “She loved him.”
Horrific Daylight Scene
Paul Bass Photo
Walkway where Ciera Jones was shot.
Hill neighborhood organizer Leslie Radcliffe, who lives on the block, heard the gunshots Monday afternoon.
At first she thought it was resumption of the deafening Independence Day fireworks that had plagued the neighborhood until 4 a.m., she told the Independent.
“Then I opened my patio door. I heard people screaming: ‘They shot her! They shot her!’”
Radcliffe crossed the street to the house while dialing 911.
She came upon a horrific scene: Jones was at the side of her house “laying there” with blood and “pieces of her skull” on the concrete, Radcliffe said. Four or five young people were with on the scene, along with medics.
Radcliffe said she knew and liked Jones, and likes her mother and her brother, who also live in the house. “She would be on the porch. She would help us unload the car,” she said of the young woman.
Radcliffe was still shaken by the incident as she spoke about it hours later: “I was just calming down from” consoling a ” friend who lost her son” in a recent shooting in Hamden. As a year of incessant gun violence continues.
Alder Seeks Response To Increased Violence
WTNH
Officers at the scene of Monday’s Truman Street homicide.
Shootings have risen dramatically in New Haven, as in other cities, since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. From January to July 6 in 2019 there were 29 nonfatal shootings and three homicides; the city had 46 nonfatal shootings and nine homicides over the same period in 2020. This year so far the numbers stand at 60 nonfatal shootings and now 16 homicides.
The neighborhood’s alder, Evelyn Rodriguez, has been meeting with people on Truman Street in the wake of the shooting. She said people are shaken.
Whatever the particulars of this homicide, she said, she tied the recent upsurge in shootings to a combination of factors, including the pandemic and the erosion of social services and opportunities available to young people. “Covid has been detrimental to our young adult community. We have been inside for so long. Now people are coming out. It’s warm weather.
“We have to find a way to help our young people,” Rodriguez said, calling for more mental health support and community mediation.
Ciera Jones with her father.
Ciera Jones’s homicide was the 16th so far this year in New Haven.
In January, Alfreda Youmans, 50, and Jeffrey Dotson, 42, were found dead by the police inside a Winthrop Avenue apartment, Jorge Osorio-Caballero, 32, was shot and killed in Fair Haven, Marquis Winfrey, 31, was shot and killed in Newhallville, and Joseph Vincent Mattei, 28, was shot and killed in the Hill. Someone shot Kevin Jiang, 26, to death in Goatville on Feb. 6. Angel Rodriguez, 21, was shot to death in Fair Haven in mid-February, his body dumped by the Mill River in East Rock. Dwaneia Alexandria Turner, 28, was shot to death in the Hill on March 16 during an argument with two other women.
On March 26, Alessia Mesquita was shot dead in Fair Haven. Then 20-year-old Mariyah Inthirath was killed Saturday, May 15, on Sheffield Avenue and Hopeton Jack was killed near Orchard and George on Tuesday, May 18. On May 19, Tashawn Brown was shot dead across from Edgewood Park. On May 26, 34-year-old Adrian Barwise was shot inside a Sherman Parkway house during an apparent argument over a game, according to police. Miguel Ramos, 37, was shot dead on Springside Avenue on June 6.
Richard Whitaker Jr. was shot to death on Columbus Avenue in the Hill on June 15 — after having watched a gunman shoot his brother dead in the neighborhood the previous August.
Doesn't sound like it's random if the police prevented a retaliation shooting. Friends need to speak up, break the code of silence and help the NHPD. NHPD are repsonding to several shootings a day and noone wants to talk about what they saw.