NEW HAVEN, Conn. — During a recent sweep of violence in the streets of New Haven, police made three arrests in the 2022 homicide of 16-year-old Joshua Vazquez.
Police said that on Dec. 19, 2022 at 4:22 p.m., Vazquez was shot while riding his bike on Valley Street near the corner of Valley Street and Harper Avenue when an SUV drove by and one of the people in the car shot him. He died at the hospital a short time later.
According to police, the arrests include the shooter, Angelo Gibson, 17; Gibson's mother, Latasha Brown, 46, who was driving the car when the shots were fired; and Ronald Miller, 59.
After waiting a year and a half, the friends and family of Vazquez now have a small weight lifted off their shoulders.
Unique Trujillo, Vazquez's friend, said, “That boy was a heart of gold. He had a heart of gold.”
She added that it was "bittersweet in the sense that, he got his justice. And I’m very thankful for that.”
Alder Honda Smith of New Haven recalled that she was at her community center, called "The Shack," after 4:20 p.m. when she heard gunshots down the street.
"I will never forget," Honda Smith said. "It will forever be a dark memory in my life."
At the scene, she found a 16-year-old boy she worked closely with and volunteered with lying in the street; someone who helped the elderly and his neighbors. It was Vazquez.
Honda Smith said, “I wanted to drop to my knees when I saw the paramedics trying to revive Josh.”
Using surveillance video and license plate readers, police identified the driver as Brown, charging her and Miller in connection to the case in April of 2023.
New Haven Police Department Assistant Chief Bertram Ettienne said Gibson was arrested last week "as the person responsible for fatally shooting Joshua Vazquez."
Police apologized to the family for taking a long time to crack the case.
New Haven Police Chief Karl Jacobson said that "these are very difficult cases" and that “it must have been terrible to wait a year and a half. But some families, we still owe them this justice, and it’s not there yet. And we may not get it, but we’re not going to give up.”
The motive in the case is currently unclear, but police believe a a feud started between the victim and the suspect in 2017, and this may have been a continuation of that.
Julia LeBlanc is a reporter at FOX61 News. She can be reached at jleblanc@fox61.com Follow her on Facebook, X and Instagram.
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