HARTFORD - Hartford police said they have made two arrests in the shooting of a 10-year-old girl two weeks ago.
On Wednesday morning, police said they arrested the shooter and getaway driver from the November 6 incident on Branford Street in Hartford. Both were safely taken into custody at 6 a.m., according to police.
The alleged shooter is a 17-year-old from Hartford, and he is charged with first-degree assault, first-degree conspiracy to commit an assault, first-degree reckless endangerment and unlawful discharge of a firearm. He was not identified due to his age.
The driver is Kwanze Flucker, 20, of Bloomfield, and he is charged with first-degree conspiracy to commit an assault and first-degree criminal liability/assault.
Flucker had actually been arrested just last week in connection to another shooting in the area.
The shooting happened on Branford Street on the afternoon of Sunday, November 6 when shots were fired into a home and one bullet hit the girl in the face. She had just been cooking for her dad when 11 shots rang out and went through the front of her house.
"It traveled right from the back of the head, through the face, and then deposited right under the eye," said Andrew Wood, the executive director for Hartford Communities that Care, who has spent a lot of time with the family since the shooting.
And it looks like she'll recover well. "The swelling is down and she's doing relatively well," Wood said. "There was no brain injury, there was no brain hemorrhage to the ear, or inner ear, or certainly with the eye as well."
The bullet is expected to be removed in the coming days and the she will be able to go back to school.
Meanwhile, police said Flucker and the juvenile shooter apparently targeted the wrong house. Police said the target of the shooting no longer lived at the address where the shooting took place, though may have been related to the girl. The shooting had been the result of previous "back-and-forth retaliatory shootings," police said.
Deputy Chief Brian Foley said, "They have some extended family you could say that were involved that did not reside there, unfortunately, and their house was chosen by mistake by the suspects is what we believe."
The other shooting that Flucker is connected to was at 679 Blue Hills Avenue in Hartford on October 30. Police said they found a victim suffering from a single gunshot wound to his leg, lying on the sidewalk at the intersection of Blue Hills Avenue and West Euclid Street. That victim was taken to St. Francis Hospital for treatment of his injury, which was determined to be non-life threatening.
During the search of Flucker's home during his arrest, police said they found the gun and a stolen moped, which witnesses described as the getaway vehicle in the Blue Hill Ave shooting. The gun believed to be used in the shootings was stolen from Glastonbury, according to police.
Flucker was charged with having a pistol without a permit, first-degree reckless endangerment, first-degree criminal attempt to assault and first-degree assault.
Flucker's bail is set at $1 million.
