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2 arrested after 4-year-old Hamden boy dies in Branford crash involving stolen car

Warning: Some of the video may be too upsetting for some audiences. BRANFORD –Connecticut State Police say a 4-year-old Hamden boy was killed and a 15-year-old ...
tyler-carey-and-brandon-little

Warning: Some of the video may be too upsetting for some audiences.

BRANFORD –Connecticut State Police say a 4-year-old Hamden boy was killed and a 15-year-old East Haven boy was injured when the stolen car they were in crashed after a police pursuit.

2 arrested after 4-year-old Hamden boy dies in Branford crash involving stolen car

The driver refused to stop, and started driving extremely fast, police said. He exited a parking lot, crossed two lanes of traffic and went onto I-95 northbound. Police chased the car for two minutes, but stopped near Exit 54 in Branford due to the "extremely high rate of speed" the car was going.

The entire incident was caught on the officer's dash camera, but the footage is not yet being released.

Not long after, the officer got off the highway onto Route 1 to return to his patrol, he noticed smoke from a car crash and found the suspect, who had slammed head-on with a 2004 Honda Element two miles away. As the officer approached, the driver ran into the woods.

While police were investigating, they found four kids in the car under the age of 15, as well as another adult who had multiple warrants out for his arrest. One child, a 4-year-old boy from Hamden, was seriously injured in the crash. He had been sitting on another person's lap, and in the dash cam video you can see someone carrying the boy out of the car.

"We heard a big crash and then I heard someone yelling 'Help! Help!'" said a witness of the crash who didn't want to be identified. She added, "So I yelled, I was like 'call 911' but then I saw the cops right behind him."

Heather Beedle, of Branford, and her boyfriend arrived just moments after the crash. "The front half of it was totally smashed in and there was smoke, like, everywhere, I saw smoke like all the way down the street," she said.

She knew something was wrong by how people at the scene were acting. "I kind of knew, like, inside there was something wrong because he was, like, patting his face a lot like, 'Are you awake?'" Beedle said of the moment she saw the boy being held in the street.

The young boy, later identified as Jarius Benjamin, died at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He was related to at least one person in the car, but police would not confirm what type of relation that was.

The driver of the Honda declined medical treatment.

A police K-9 tracked down the driver of the Corolla, and he was identified as Tyler Carey, 18, of East Haven. Carey was arrested and charged with four counts of risk of injury to a minor, reckless endangerment in the first degree, reckless driving, larceny in the second degree, failure to have tail lights, failure to stop for police, misuse of license plate, driving in the improper lane and failure to signal.

More charges will be added due to the young boy's death, but for now Carey is being held on $500,000 bond.

The other adult passenger, Brandon Little, 24, of New Haven, was arrested for the multiple warrants out for his arrest from New Haven and West Haven.

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