Gunman in Norwich shooting gets four years in prison
Editor's Note: Merzilas Braboy received a Certificate of Pardon from the State of Connecticut Board of Pardons and Paroles on Sept. 1, 2021. He was pardon on the four charges stemming from this incident.
A superior court judge in New London today sentenced the gunman in a drive-by style shooting outside The Wauregan in Norwich last year to four years in prison and five years special parole.
Corey Wynn, 23, was sentenced in connection with the Sept. 29, 2008 shooting, along with two drug related arrests and a domestic violence incident involving the mother of his one-month-old daughter.
Police said Wynn was with several other men when he fired several rounds at two women on Broadway in Norwich. No one was injured, but prosecutor John Gravalec-Pannone said one of the bullets came within inches of an innocent bystander smoking a cigarette outside the Wauregan Laundromat.
Wynn had accumulated numerous arrests around the time of the shooting. On Oct. 15, 2008, police said he slapped and choked his daughter’s 22-year-old mother in a Montville hotel room and threatened to shoot her whole family if she went to police. At the time of his arrest, police said they found Wynn in possession of crack cocaine.
At sentencing today, defense lawyer Theodore Koch said Wynn had suffered an abusive childhood and was beaten from age 3 into his teens by his father. Wynn had also served in Iraq with the National Guard, he said, exposing him to more violence.
Koch unfurled a 10-foot long sheet of paper to emphasize the short period of time Wynn was committing crimes compared to the rest of his life.
Wynn told Judge Susan B. Handy he takes responsibility for his actions and had grown since his incarceration.
“I miss my family. I miss my daughter. My family is the most important thing to me,” Wynn said through tears.
Handy, who dropped a year off of the state’s five year recommended sentence, told Wynn, “you can’t be running around the streets with a bunch of hoodlums with guns.”
Cases against Merzilas Braboy, 18, of Norwich and Richard J. David, 23, are pending in connection with the Norwich shooting. Witnesses to the Broadway shooting said Ernest Kinsler, formerly of Norwich, also was in the car at the time of the shooting, police said. Though he was not charged in that case, he faces unrelated charges in connection with a home invasion in Norwich in which one man was shot.
Wynn pleaded guilty under the Alford Doctrine to charges that include conspiracy to commit first-degree assault, possession of cocaine with intent to sell, second-degree strangulation, risk of injury to a minor and first-degree failure to appear.
Under the Alford Doctrine, Wynn does not admit guilt, but agrees the state has enough evidence for a conviction. Alford pleas often are used in plea bargains.
This article originally appeared on The Bulletin: Gunman in Norwich shooting gets four years in prison
