At 6:52 p.m. on Tuesday, a 9-year-old boy was shot while riding as a passenger in a motor vehicle in the area of Foote Street and Ashmun Street — approximately 0.2 miles from the Yale Police Department and Yale Health, according to New Haven Police Department spokesperson Anthony Duff in an email. The injuries were non-life threatening, and the boy is currently in stable condition.
In an email update Wednesday afternoon, Duff wrote that investigators believe that prior to the shooting, the victim was playing basketball at a court near his home with other boys when one of them took the 9-year-old’s ball and left with it. Shortly after, the 9-year-old boy and his father walked around Dixwell neighborhood, looking to retrieve the boy’s basketball, Duff wrote.
Afterwards, the father and son were picked up in a motor vehicle with the mother in the car. The car traveled along Foote Street, according to Duff. There, several gunshots were fired at the family’s vehicle. One shot struck the 9-year-old boy in the pelvis.
Immediately after the shooting, the family drove the victim to the Saint Raphael Campus of the Yale-New Haven Hospital. No evidence reported at this point has connected the basketball theft incident to the shooting.
New Haven police officers responded to the area after a Shotspotter alert — a city-implemented technology that detects the precise location of gunfire — went off. Clinicians from the Yale Child Study Center — which partners with the NHPD to respond to police calls where children are victims or witnesses to trauma — also responded to the scene where there had been several neighborhood children present during the incident, according to Duff.
By early Wednesday morning., the victim was transferred by ambulance from the Saint Raphael Campus of the Yale-New Haven Hospital on 1450 Chapel Street to Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital on Park Street, according to an earlier update on Wednesday morning.
Yale Police Chief Ronnell Higgins sent out a public safety advisory alerting the Yale community of the incident at 10:13 p.m. Tuesday night. In the communitywide email, Higgins identified the victim as “a non-Yale affiliate” and stated that the incident did not occur on campus. Higgins told the News on Wednesday afternoon that he is unable to provide additional comments.
The investigation is active, and witnesses are asked to call the New Haven Police Department Detective Bureau at 203-946-6304.
Sammy Westfall | sammy.westfall@yale.edu