Bridgeport woman charged in crushing death

BRIDGEPORT -- A city woman is accused of killing a former lover with her car.

Cherelle Baldwin, 21, of Ash Street in Bridgeport, was arrested Monday and charged with the murder of Jeffrey Brown, 24, and is being held on a $1 million bond.

In the early morning hours of May 18, Baldwin plowed into Brown with a red Pontiac G6, crushing him to death against a garage's cinder-block wall, police said. Brown died of blunt force trauma injuries.

"There was a significant impact when he was struck," said William Kaempffer, spokesman for the Bridgeport Police Department. "The vehicle pushed in the cinder-block wall more than 10 inches."

Baldwin gave several accounts to a variety of people, but they could not be substantiated by physical evidence at the scene, police said.

Relatives of Brown told News12 that Brown was the father of a 2-year-old son with Baldwin. Kaempffer said the toddler was not in the vehicle when Baldwin pinned his father against the wall with her car.

According to a police source, Bridgeport police had come to Baldwin's Ash Street residence for previous domestic violence complaints concerning the couple. Early on in the investigation, police described the incident as a possible "domestic homicide."

Accident reconstruction specialists from the Trumbull Police Department assisted Bridgeport detectives and determined that the Pontiac Baldwin was driving traveled about 100 feet, accelerating all the while, before plowing into Baldwin, Kaempffer said, adding that "there was no sign she attempted to brake."

Bridgeport Police Chief Joseph Gaudett Jr. credited Detective Hector Teixeira for bringing about Baldwin's arrest.

"(He) interviewed a large number of people to get a clear understanding of what happened, and work by the crime scene unit and accident investigators was key to getting to the truth," Gaudett said, adding that he was also grateful to the Trumbull Police Department, including its accident reconstructionists.

mgbrown@ctpost.com; 203-330-6288; twitter.com/MariAnGailBrown