Woman shot to death in Stamford’s Lione Park was bystander

A family member of one defendant was overcome and collapsed in the Stamford courthouse’s main hallway following the arraignment. She was taken out by emergencey personnel. A family member of one defendant was overcome and collapsed in the Stamford courthouse’s main hallway following the arraignment. She was taken out by emergencey personnel. Photo: John Nickerson / Hearst Connecticut Media Photo: John Nickerson / Hearst Connecticut Media Image 1 of / 29 Caption Close Woman shot to death in Stamford’s Lione Park was bystander 1 / 29 Back to Gallery

STAMFORD — Maxine Gooden was just standing there with her daughter talking with friends in a parking lot at Lione Park, when the shooting began.

Her daughter, Andrina Roberts, thought her mother was bending over to escape the bullets. But she soon realized that her mother had been hit.

“Boom, boom, boom, boom... I saw her ducking, but then she got hit,” Roberts, 24, said Tuesday as she choked back sobs and described how she tried to save her mother’s life.

“I was breathing into her, breathing into her, breathing into her to stay alive. She had a pulse when the ambulance came,” Roberts said. “Fifteen or twenty minutes after getting to the hospital, the doctor came out and told me she did not make it.”

Unlike so many other cases, where families of victims don’t know for some time who has taken their loved one away and bystanders won’t talk to police for fear of being labeled snitches, two witnesses to shooting that took Gooden’s life took heroic, if dangerous, action.

When the shooter and another man ran, they chased them around the block. When the two jumped into a waiting getaway car on Delaware Avenue and sped off, the witnesses got into theirs and followed. They called 911, got a description of the car - a black Jeep - and its license plate number, and gave them to police.

Only moments later, Officer Nicole Petrenko spotted the car and followed it until backup arrived. Between five and seven other cruisers converged on the Jeep on Strawberry Hill Avenue near the Tully Health Center, and, with guns drawn, pulled three men out of it, Capt. Richard Conklin said Thursday.

The three men, all from Stamford and in their 20s, were arrested, and were sent to jail on $1 million bonds at their arraignments Tuesday before Judge Auden Grogins.

“This is very rare and we are very, very happy that witnesses came forward,” Conklin said. “It is rare in recent shootings that witnesses have been as forthcoming.”

Jhonel Telemin-Valerio, 21, of Lafayette Street, was charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Deshawn Hayes, 24, of Givens Avenue, and Morris Joel Moore Jr., 23, of Cove Road, were charged with conspiracy to commit murder.

The lead investigator in the case, Sgt. Paul Guzda said police were able to gather a good amount of evidence from the shooting in a short period of time.

“We feel we have a very, very solid case here," Guzda said.

But while Gooden’s family has the limited satisfaction of suspects already caught, they don’t have the answer to why the tragedy happened.

“She didn’t do anything to anybody. She didn’t have problems with anybody. Everybody loves her. All she wanted to do is cook for people and feed people. I just can’t believe this happened,” Roberts said.

Maxine Gooden and was an expert Jamaican cook. At the park, everybody knew Gooden for her jerk chicken, curry chicken, curry goat, pepper shrimp, rice and peas and especially her cowfoot soup, her family members said Tuesday at her Myano Court home, where they gathered to remember her.

Roberts was just a few feet away in the park when her mother was shot in the torso.

“I was right there,” Roberts said explaining through tears that her mother had injured her back and had been on disability. As the disability money began to run out in May, she tried to make ends meet by going to the park to sell her food.

A mother of five, Gooden, 43, was a native of Jamaica who came to the United States at age 13 and worked her way up to become a certified nurse’s assistant.

“Maxine was a joyful loving mother. Her life was basically her children. She loved every one of her five children and she lived for all of them, that’s what I can say,” longtime friend Nikeisha Griffiths said.

Gooden’s second oldest daughter Danielle Phillips , 22, said she could not understand what happened at Lione Park Monday night.

“I loved my mom, we were very close. She was very nice, very giving and very positive. She never started arguments, so I don’t know what happened,” Roberts said.

Another friend who has known Gooden since the seventh grade, Stacey Edwards, said her good friend had a tremendous sense of humor. “She was someone who could always make you laugh,” Edwards said with a smile.

As well as her cooking, Roberts said her mother loved her three doves, plants and music. Along with her two daughters, she is survived by three sons; Christopher Roberts, 26, Jordan Gooden, 15, and Jamair Gooden, 10. Plans have not yet been set for a funeral.

Guzda said Gooden was an innocent bystander caught up in some sort of payback scenario for an earlier incident in the park.

None of the lawyers for the three men argued to have their heavy bonds reduced. Telemin, the alleged shooter in the case, appeared in court dressed in a white paper suit, after police took his clothes for evidence, with his attorney, Robert Bello. Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Paul Ferencek told Grogins that two independent witnesses said they saw Telemin with a gun a moment before the shots were fired. No pleas or arguments to reduce the heavy bonds were made. The three were scheduled to make their pleas Dec. 2

Telemin had been out on $50,000 bond on charges of stealing a car in Norwalk in May. Hayes and Moore both have felony convictions in their past for second-degree assault.

It may have been just luck that only one person was shot. Multiple bullet casings were found at the scene. One stray bullet went through a Merrell Avenue apartment window frame across the street from the park, continued through an interior wall and struck a the dead center of a jacket hanging in a stairwell hallway.

The resident of the apartment, who did not want his name used, made a video of the bullet’s trajectory through his home. It even pierced a coat hanging from a doorknob.

The Merrell Avenue resident said he had just walked up those stairs moments earlier with his two-year-old daughter.

“I could be dead,” he said.

Conklin said that after the Jeep was pulled over and searched, police found some bullets on the floor of the Jeep and investigators are comparing them to those found at the scene. Guzda said that the shellcasings found at the scene appear to be a match for the bullets found in the car.

Lione Park is located on Stamford’s West Side near the Boys & Girls Club, and is heavily used by soccer and cricket teams. It is not the first time someone has been killed in the park. In the summer of 2011, Romario “Mario” Marchant, 16, of the Bronx was stabbed to death during a post game party after a soccer game.

Another neighbor said he was in his bed when he heard about four shots come from the park.

“I got up and then the police came, a lot of police,“ said Elias Aguilar, 32, who lives on Delaware Avenue. Aguilar said he has lived next to the park for about four months. He remembers moving in at night and there were about 20 people hanging out and making a lot of noise in a parking lot across the street. After cleaning a lot of trash out of the area and trimming some trees, things improved.

But he said, "There are still problems here.“

Pierre Sanon, 42, who lives downstairs from Jackson, said he was just parking his minivan with his wife, daughter, 3, and baby son, five months, when he heard the shots coming from the park. He said he got his family out of the car and ran for cover.

“It did not make a lot of noise, but it sounded powerful," Sanon said of the shots being fired.

“That park is too dark,“ Sanon said of the park that he and Jackson moved in next to 10 months ago. “It could have been me, who got shot.“

Jackson, 41, also said the park needs more lights and cameras too. “This is a dangerous place. I knew this would happen. There isn’t a single light in the parking lot," he said. Walking around the park, Jackson said he finds empty dope bags and used condoms regularly.

“I am so disturbed about this because I love this place and I love the city. But his is unacceptable,“ Jackson said.