At approximately 2:00 a.m. early Saturday morning, shots were fired near the intersection of High and Crown streets according to a press release from City Hall spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga. One man – a non-student – was injured.

Although the shooting did not occur on campus, more than 100 Yale undergraduates live in off-campus housing located within a block of the shooting. Many more Yale students were in the area early Saturday morning attending parties at apartments and fraternities located along High Street, which are less than a block away from on-campus properties.

Based on an initial investigation, police said they believe the victim was an innocent bystander who was shot as a nearby robbery attempt went awry. The suspect approached a male from Bridgeport and tried to rob him, Mayorga said. The male from Bridgeport fled and the suspect fired a handgun, aiming for the man he was trying to rob.

He missed and hit the unintended victim, a male in his late twenties, who is neither a student nor someone affiliated with the University, police said. According to the press release, the victim was shot in the leg, and the injury was non-life threatening.

A Yale senior who was walking back to his room on High Street at the time of the shooting said he saw a man in a car yelling profanity out the window. Someone got out of the passenger side of the car, he said, and started shooting. The senior said he ducked into an alley and watched as the car sped off.

The police arrived “within seconds,” he said.

By 2:30 a.m. High Street was unusually quiet for a weekend evening. The street was closed to cars, as yellow crime-scene tape was draped across High Street by Crown Street and half-way down the block.

The incident near campus was not the only shooting that occurred in the city last night. Less than a half-hour after this shooting, a New Haven resident in his early twenties was fatally shot near Water and Brown Street, Mayorga said.

It was the city’s first homicide of 2009.

The suspect in this incident fled the scene in a dark colored vehicle.

Police are asking that anyone with information on either of these two incidents contact the New Haven Police Department.