by THOMAS BREEN The New Haven independent
(Updated) Seventeen-year-old New Havener Daily Jackson was walking on Shelton Avenue Tuesday evening when someone in a “suspect vehicle” shot and killed him and drove away — making him the second Riverside Academy student to die by gunfire in the past two weeks.
While police have not yet definitively confirmed that these two shooting deaths of city teenagers are related, Police Chief Karl Jacobson said on Wednesday, “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that two friends are murdered in two weeks.”
The New Haven Police Department (NHPD) first posted about Jackson’s death on the social media site Xon Tuesday. The department’s spokesperson, Officer Christian Bruckhart, sent out an email press release on Wednesday with further details, including an identification of Jackson as the victim.
Bruckhart wrote that, at around 6:41 p.m. Tuesday, city police officers were dispatched to an address on Shelton Avenue near Huntington Street in Newhallville for the report of a person shot. Police had also received 911 calls reporting “a male victim lying in the driveway suffering from a gunshot wound.”
Medical aid was rendered on scene, and Jackson was transported to Yale New Haven Hospital, where he died from his injuries.
Video surveillance obtained by the police department’s Real Time Crime Center “showed a person inside a suspect vehicle fire at Jackson as he was walking on Shelton Avenue and initial indications are that this was not a random attack,” Bruckhart wrote. “There were no other injuries reported. Ballistic evidence was located in the area.”
Tuesday’s homicide came one day after 25-year-old New Havener Christopher Santana was shot and killed in a parking lot behind a George Street apartment complex in the West River neighborhood on Monday afternoon.
It also came less than two weeks after 16-year-old Uzziah Shell, who was also a Riverside Academy student, was shot dead near Goffe and Hudson streets in the Dixwell neighborhood on Nov. 22.
In a followup interview Wednesday morning, Jacobson said that Jackson’s and Shell’s deaths are “potentially” related, though right now the investigations of those two homicides are leading in slightly different directions.
He noted that Jackson and Shell were friends, and both were students at Riverside, the city’s last remaining alternative high school for at-risk students.
Jacobson said that, on Wednesday morning, the police department had “a major meeting” with juvenile probation, the public school district, the city’s Youth and Recreation Department, Project Longevity, and the Connecticut Violence Intervention Program (CT VIP) at Riverside’s Hill campus. All of these groups are working together in “assisting kids” and their families in that small school community.
“We’re going to share as much info as we have to make sure we know who the kids are at risk,” Jacobson said. He also urged parents to “follow up with [their] kids, know what’s going on,” make sure they’re not out alone at night. Although these situations “appear to be targeted,” he said about Jackson’s and Shell’s deaths, the community needs to be vigilant.
Outside of Riverside’s Hallock Avenue school building Wednesday morning, Riverside Principal Derek Stephenson declined to comment. He said that the public school district’s spokesperson would be sending out a comment on his behalf later in the day.
Police ask that anyone who may have witnessed this incident or who may have information valuable to investigators to call detectives at 203 – 946-6304 or through the department’s anonymous tip-line at 866 – 888-TIPS (8477).
Tuesday’s shooting death marks the 13th homicide so far this year. According to the city’s most recently published CompStat crime data report, New Haven had seen 22 homicides by this point last year.
Maya McFadden contributed to this report.