Man held in lieu of $1 million bond in East Hartford home invasion
Sep. 21—A Hartford man is being held in lieu of a $1 million bond while facing charges that he barged into an East Hartford home in February and held several people at gunpoint while demanding $5,000 he said he was owed by a resident who wasn't home.
Among the items that the man, Oshane Meggie, 27, is accused of stealing in the incident is a Bible.
Meggie is charged with home invasion, first-degree robbery, risk of injury to a child, and gun offenses in the Feb. 6 incident, records show. He is being held at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield and is next due Oct. 14 in Hartford Superior Court.
Meggie remains on special parole as a result of a 2016 incident in which he was convicted of carrying a pistol without a permit after admitting he fired shots on Capen Street in Hartford, records show. In that case, he was sentenced to two years and a day in prison, followed by 34 months, or almost three years, of special parole.
At the time of the shooting incident, Meggie was on youthful offender probation for involvement in the attempted robbery of a Chinese restaurant in Windsor in 2011, when he was 17.
HOME INVASION
DEFENDANT: OSHANE MEGGIE, 27, OF HARTFORD.
CHARGES: HOME INVASION, FIRST-DEGREE ROBBERY, RISK OF INJURY TO A CHILD, CARRYING A PISTOL WITHOUT A PERMIT, CRIMINAL POSSESSION OF A FIREARM IN FEB. 6 INCIDENT IN EAST HARTFORD.
STATUS: HELD IN LIEU OF $1 MILLION BOND, DUE OCT. 14 IN HARTFORD SUPERIOR COURT.
In the February case in East Hartford, a resident of the house managed to get away to the home of a neighbor, who called 911, East Hartford police Officer Rebecca Wise reported.
When police arrived, Meggie fled from the house, followed by officers as he climbed over chain-link fences and ran through the Veterans Terrace apartment complex on Columbus Circle. He fell in "heavy brush" on the bank of a brook, and an officer handcuffed him there, Wise reported.
Meggie didn't have a gun on him, but two officers found a .22-caliber revolver nearby, Wise added.
Two police officers were injured in the chase — one suffering a knee injury and the other suffering a cut to the palm of her hand that required stitches, Wise reported.
She recounted the following information from interviews people who were present:
A resident of one apartment in the two-family house told police that Meggie pushed her into her home, pointed a gun at her, and said, "If you move, I'll kill you."
She said he then ordered her to go to the other apartment in the same house, where he ordered her and several other women to sit inside and demanded $5,000. She said he ordered everyone to put their cellphones in a bag, went upstairs to the room of the man he claimed owed him the money, and took a laptop computer.
The woman said he also went upstairs in her apartment next door and stole the Bible from her bedroom.
The woman said Meggie grew frightened when he saw that the house had a video surveillance system and asked, "Did you call the police?"
One woman said she had money in a car. Although Meggie threatened to "kill all of you" if she didn't return, the woman ran to the neighbor's house to call police.
The woman who fled to make the police call said Meggie had been to the house earlier in the afternoon looking for the man he would later claim owed him money, and the home's security cameras showed him arriving and leaving.
One resident of the house was in very poor health and struggled to speak about the incident, the officer reported. A visitor reported that she ran outside when Meggie went upstairs and called 911 from another neighbor's house.
A call Monday to Meggie's public defender, John L. Stawicki, wasn't immediately returned.
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