Tramire High-Fives The Nurse

by Thomas MacMillan | Oct 10, 2012 3:17 pm

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(Updated) A 1 1/2-year-old boy is expected to survive after he was shot in the stomach on Kensington Street in the Dwight neighborhood. The shooting occurred on the porch of 60 Kensington St. Wednesday around 2:35 p.m. The little boy, Tramire Miller, had been sitting next to his aunt. The shots came from someone firing out the window of a car traveling south on Kensington from Edgewood Avenue towards Chapel Street. The child’s father, Timothy Miller, gathered the baby in his arms after the shooting and took the boy to the emergency room at the nearby St. Raphael campus of Yale-New Haven Hospital, where he was operated on. The child’s condition was initially described as critical. By 3:25 p.m. police said it was stable. At around 5 p.m., the baby was be taken to Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital. “It appears that the baby’s out of danger” of dying, Assistant Chief Archie Generoso said. At 6:15 p.m. officials held a press conference outside Yale New-Haven’s Children’s Hospital, where Tramire had been moved. Officials said that the boy was calm and that he will pull through. At one point he gave a nurse a high-five as he was moved from a gurney to his bed in the pediatric intensive care unit, according to Mayor John DeStefano. Immediately after the shooting, police blocked off the area around Kensington and Edgewood. Nearby Troup School was temporarily locked down. Then the area was busy with parents walking backpack-toting kids home from school. Police were looking for either a black 2010 Nissan Altima or a 2010 dark blue or black four-door Honda seen leaving the scene. By 4 p.m. they expanded the crime scene to include more of the area around the three-story beige house where the shooting occurred. Detectives also reviewed footage from outdoor surveillance cameras belonging to the nearby Shop Smart corner store, but didn’t see anything useful, according to a worker there. The house (pictured), part of the neighborhood’s scattered federally subsidized Kensington Square development, stands diagonally across the street from the Advance Child Care Center daycare at the corner of Kensington and Edgewood. A woman and a daughter at the scene said they heard five shots. “She threw herself on the floor,” the mom said of the daughter. Kylie Welsh, who is 34 and lives two houses away from corner of Edgewood and Kensington, said she was watching cartoons with her 3-year-old son in their first-floor apartment. “I heard the gunshots,” at least six, she said. “You’re used to hearing gunshots, unfortunately.” What was strange, she said, was how “dead quiet” followed this incident, instead of the customary screaming. Dwight Alderman Frank Douglass said neighbors feel it’s unsafe to be outside because of violence. “People in the neighborhood feel like they’re being held hostage. It’s crazy. I’m just sick and tired of it.” Detectives were already pursuing “several substantial leads” in the drive-by shooting, police spokesman Officer David Hartman said at the scene at 3:40 p.m. Chief Dean Esserman shuttled between the scene, where he huddled for updates with top cops, and the hospital, where he spoke with the family. Shots were reported fired earlier in the day on Stevens Street in the Hill. It was unknown if the two incidents were linked. At the 6:15 p.m. press conference outside the Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital on Howard Avenue, Mayor DeStefano said Tramire was “calm and alert.” “We look forward to his recovery,” he said. “Kensington has been quiet all summer,” the mayor (at left in photo) noted. “I think it’s an amazingly cold thing for anyone to be a part of this.” DeStefano said Tramire’s mom, Sherie, is asking anyone with information about the shooting “to please trust and work with the police department.” “A child of this city is a child of us all,” said Chief Dean Esserman (at right in photo). Police will continue to work the case into the night, Esserman said. DeStefano said the city’s street outreach workers are being deployed. Shirley West, the head of the street outreach program, said workers would be fanning out to the neighborhood to try to prevent any further violence, including any retaliation. “We’ll continue to say to people, ‘The baby’s OK. We don’t need to take this any further,’” she said.

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posted by: Streetdude on October 10, 2012 3:45pm One year olds getting shot in the ‘hood, oh but please NHPD, please Yale, please DeStefano, let’s post more cops downtown around the museums and campus. Please. I’m so sick of seeing Yalies inconvenienced and scared of their own shadows. Something must be done. Ignore the high crime neighborhoods, park your cruisers in hidden back lots while your officers call their boo and fill out paper work. “The people who need us most don’t want us and the people who want us don’t need us.” -Any cop anywhere Maybe I’m just being reactionary but I’m terribly curious to know exactly what happened where 5 shots go off in broad daylight with (apparently) two suspect vehicles. Why do you think these thugs feel safe shooting their guns in New Haven (The Hill, Dwight, Dixwell, etc.)? It couldn’t possibly have to do with a mismanagement of police resources or a lack of concern on the local government’s part. Couldn’t be.

posted by: oldtimer on October 10, 2012 4:12pm Confused by the photo seems there is crime scene taped off. Without the Crime Scene Unit Detectives within, contaminated scenes lose criminal cases.

posted by: WestvilleAdvocate on October 10, 2012 4:18pm Disgusting. What the hell is wrong with people? I hope they find the shooter(s) and lock them away for a long, long time with the sound of a baby screaming over a loud speaker in their cell.

posted by: anonymous on October 10, 2012 4:47pm Streetdude, that’s a nice theory but the presence of more cops actually leads to higher crime. Urban issues are complex. I see more cops at the corner of Kensington and Chapel every day than I do anywhere else in the entire City except Union Avenue. If we hired cops from among the literally thousands of unemployed men and women who live in the city’s 3 or 4 poorest neighborhoods, things might be different, but as it is flooding poor neighborhoods with cops who grew up and live in Wallingford or East Haven just makes those neighborhoods feel even poorer and more violence prone. It also means high rents so we can pay for all that police overtime. Instead of calling for more overtime for your union buddies, how about pray that the victim and family recovers from this unusual and tragic incident.

posted by: Jacques Strap on October 10, 2012 9:28pm @anonymous—There have been three shottings in broad daylights in the Dwight area since last spring. No way that happens with increased police presence.

posted by: HhE on October 10, 2012 9:44pm This just sucks. I am relived that Master Tramire is out of the woods, and I am impressed by his bravery. Anonymous, your comment “presence of more cops actually leads to higher crime” is without foundation. Remember this thread? http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/chief_seeks_more_cops/

posted by: Streetdude on October 11, 2012 1:56am @anonymous: I would LOVE to see a citation or source for your assertion that higher visibility or increased presence by the police leads to higher crime. I’ve never heard that, anywhere. Further, it’s needlessly insulting and totally beside the point to tell me I’d be better off praying for the young boy and his family. Of course I want the best for him and his loved ones, but that has nothing to do with the topic I was engaging.

posted by: Miss E on October 11, 2012 8:36am Maybe, just maybe, if they took the four officers that are on the green everyday worrying about catching someone selling loose cigarettes, and corrupting Yale students, they could place them somewhere else where they would be of better use. Let me see…. Sale of loose cigarettes vs the shooting of citizens and children? I’m thinking there needs to be more police added to the force. Period. All the crap about ‘finding’ money for the salaries is nonsense. New Haven can find money for other nonsense.. like the clean up of the green after that BS with the tents..

posted by: HhE on October 11, 2012 8:45am Good luck with that, Streetdude. Anonymous keeps banging out that theme, yet never cites a study or other reference. If you click on the link in my other post, you can find where I was able to push him/her to police who live in the areas they police can reduce fear of crime. Thanks for standing up for reason and logic, and welcome to the good fight.

posted by: HhE on October 11, 2012 8:51am Miss E, are you aware that there have been a rash of pack attack robberies on and around The Green? Groups of teenagers and young adults (of multiple ethnicities) on bicycles are swarming their victims.

posted by: anonymous on October 11, 2012 9:19am HhE and Streetdude, this is not the place for a detailed discussion of that, but it is clearly a very complicated issue. There are hundreds of national and international studies on the subject. There are many factors to consider, including the crime types that are impacted by patrol (e.g., vehicle theft versus personal crime), the difference between reported and actual crime, and crime displacement. The main limitation with the literature, in my opinion, is that virtually every study only looks at crime within a geographic area - they do not count the fact that 1) after people are arrested, crimes do happen in prison, but are not counted, 2) after people are arrested, they typically return to the community and often cause more crimes, and are less employable, or 3) the heavy presence of police in a neighborhood can have long term economic, psychological and social effects (as I suggested above) that are not measurable by just looking at the number of crimes or number of reported crimes. To use a simplistic example, do you think that 10 police cruisers parked outside your house all day with sirens flashing would increase your property value?



The consensus is that patrols are costly and do not reduce crime, at least in an across the board sense. Also, looking at the big picture, the fact is that boosting income within an area (say, by hiring local residents instead of importing more high paid officers from East Haven) has a much larger, and immensely significant, impact on local violent and property crimes. I encourage you to read up on the literature as it is interesting. Be wary of individual sources because they are often written by people with an agenda (e.g., UNH has a famous crime fighting program, but I believe that it is a Contractor for many unionized Police Departments).

posted by: Miss E on October 11, 2012 9:51am @Hhe-I am very, very aware of those events. I am on the green at least three times a day due my job and my mode of transportation. What I do not see is the officers stopping kids or bikes or observing the ‘swarms’ of kids. I see them watching and singling out people they suspect of selling loose cigarettes. I witness with MY eyes and MY ears MYSELF. While we are on the subject of swarms of kids and the green… was the new Gateway supposed to make downtown better? There seems like there are a million students coming and going from there. The middle of the green where bus transfers take place, are so over populated that the elderly and disabled people are barely able to get on a bus, let alone get a seat. Some of us ‘old heads’ step up and ask that they be given a seat. Does anyone really take a look at the projected, adverse ramifications for making these drastic changes.

posted by: William Kurtz anonymous, Total doublespeak. I agree completely—I think most reasonable people would—that economic opportunity would have a far more substantial effect on crime than police patrols, and that a heavy police presence in a neighborhood is accompanied by “long term economic, psychological and social effects” but it’s more likely that all of those things are the effect of a higher rate of crime, which is itself the effect of complex causes. Perhaps instead of using this incident to once again push municipal provincialism and bash unions, ” how about pray that the victim and family recovers from this unusual and tragic incident”?

posted by: Dottie on October 11, 2012 10:01am I am grateful that Tramire is o.k. I am grateful that his loving father was there to rescue him; I am grateful that witnesses came forth; I am grateful that AMISTAD ACADEMY, one block from Kensington,as well as Troup, was locked down to safeguard students. I pray for the full and quick recovery of Tramire and his family. I pray for the shooter: hurt people hurt people. Peace & Blessings

posted by: anonymous on October 11, 2012 10:30am Miss E, why don’t we just advocate that CT Transit run more buses? We used to run a lot more buses every 10 minutes, then something happened—we doubled our prison budget, and lots of other things got cut as a result.

posted by: PH on October 11, 2012 10:31am Sure would be nice to have had cameras posted on that corner now, wouldn’t it? Big Brother, or effective crime-fighting? Seems like some neighborhoods just cry out for a little extra watching.

posted by: anonymous on October 11, 2012 10:35am William Kurtz, taking action is the best form of prayer. The question is, what action do residents take next? Do we actually fix the root cause of the problem (a complex issue, but one with a solution that is quite simple), or do we keep running around in circles doing the same things we have done since 1990, the things that are simply not effective, or perhaps even counterproductive, to fixing the problem?

posted by: Miss E on October 11, 2012 11:09am @anonymous-AGREED..But then there will be the issue of higher volume of traffic because of more buses, ct transit not having funds to pay for drivers and new buses, then it will be raising bus fares.. the list goes on and on. I am truly not a political person, but I think those that are the ‘leaders’ of this city should do a better job of considering projection for the future and what the possible outcomes would be both positive and negative. I do not think New Haven is an awful place. No, I do not plan to stay forever, but I will be here for a while. I would like the opportunity for all of us, including my children and myself to be able to take advantage of all New Haven has to offer.

posted by: Miss E on October 11, 2012 11:15am I agree that the most important thing about this story is that this precious child is alive. I am grateful for everyone involved this case. Now, my concern is how to keep this from happening to someone else, adult, teenager, child.