Waterbury police make arrests in back-to-back shootings that wounded two bystanders — including boy, 10
Police said they have made arrests in a pair of shootings in Waterbury last week that wounded two bystanders, including a 10-year-old boy.
Derek St. Hilaire, 21, of Waterbury was arrested Sunday on charges of first-degree assault, reckless endangerment and weapons charges, and Thomas West, 18, also of Waterbury, was arrested Monday on similar charges, including criminal attempt to commit first-degree assault and auto theft charges. While St. Hilaire posted his $750,000 bail, West remained in custody Tuesday on $900,000 bail, police said.
Each shot at the other in separate bouts of gunfire Thursday, police said. And while St. Hilaire was wounded in one of the shootings, so were two unintended victims — the 10-year-old boy and an 18-year-old woman.
The gunfire was a result of what Chief Fernando Spagnolo referred to at a news conference Tuesday as “group violence.” Loosely organized groups of young people that lack the sophistication of the gangs of the ′90s have been committing crimes in Connecticut’s cities for years, and some have been just as violent. Many also are stealing and burglarizing cars, he said.
“We know that it is all tied in to group violence. We know that it stems from auto theft. There were two juveniles that were arrested that were in possession of stolen automobiles that were also used in these shootings,” he said. So far, three stolen cars have been tied to the shootings.
“There’s a lot of innocent people that are having their property damaged; being, at a minimum, inconvenienced by having their vehicles stolen, or property stolen from their vehicles.”
At the other end of the spectrum are the auto thefts that include “serious, violent crime” including shootings, Spagnolo said. In recent months, a Glastonbury woman who yelled at car thieves in the middle of the night was shot at, a Hartford man who confronted car burglars outside his home was wounded by gunfire and a woman putting groceries into her car in Marlborough was carjacked, kidnapped and beaten. In New Britain, a runner was struck and killed by a young person behind the wheel of a stolen car.
The first of the two Waterbury shootings happened about 7 p.m. Thursday in the area of 535 Congress Avenue, near John Street, police said. An 18-year-old was shot and is expected to recover.
Police suspect St. Hilaire was the shooter, and “we believe that West was the intended target of that shooting earlier in the evening,” Spagnolo said.
About a half-hour later, down the block, St. Hilaire was shot in the leg and a boy who lives at the address was wounded in his rib area, police said. The projectile missed the boy’s vital organs and he survived, but Spagnolo said last week that he is worried about the psychological scars the boy will bear from the shooting.
Gun violence and auto crimes have got to stop, the chief said Tuesday.
“It’s out of control, frankly. We’ve seen a lot of recidivism happing with juveniles who are released into the community,” he said.
Spagnolo said he doesn’t know if the problem is a lack of services or a lack of research about which juveniles are too violent to be released, but “we need to look into that.”
Christine Dempsey may be reached at cdempsey@courant.com.
