Forum to address gun violence
Recent homicides and other shootings have residents on edge, alderman says
A public forum on community safety and recent gun violence in Kingston, including three unsolved homicides in a period of less than four months, has been scheduled for early next month.
The Common Council’s Public Safety/General
Government Committee will hold the forum beginning at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 4, in City Hall, 420 Broadway. Kingston Mayor Steve Noble, city Police Chief Egidio Tinti and Ulster County District Attorney David Clegg will attend “to listen and discuss community safety,” according to information provided by the city.
“We want to give every individual an opportunity to voice their concerns and to hear what is being done to ensure the safety of all in the community,” Alderman Tony Davis, chairman of the Public Safety/General Gov
ernment Committee, said Friday afternoon.
Davis, D-Ward 6, said people have been reaching out to him to talk about the recent gun violence. He said he wanted to hold the forum so people can hear about what is happening in their neighborhoods and learn ways to help make their community safer.
Some people have expressed fear about walking outside at night or sitting on their front porches, Davis said.
“I don’t want the people of Kingston to feel they have to sit inside their house and be locked in,” the alderman said. He said Kingston is a safe place in spite of the recent violence.
Tinti on Friday said he will share what information he can at the forum and go over things people can do to help the police department.
The chief said police are “working on quite a few leads” in the shootings.
In the most recent case, Ashley Stephan Dixon, 31, of Green Street in Kingston, was fatally shot the evening of Tuesday, Feb. 11, outside the Stuyvesant Charter Apartments on Sheehan
Court.
Clegg said Dixon was shot at “relatively close” range, from within “10 feet or less,” with a 40-caliber Glock handgun. Dixon was struck twice in the abdomen and once in the arm. He died soon afterward at HealthAlliance Hospital’s Broadway Campus.
The other two recent homicides in Kingston happened in the fall of 2019: Daniel Thomas, 27, was shot to death on Oct. 24, near the intersection of Cedar and Prospect streets; and Myron T. Moye, 36, was killed Nov. 1 in the house at 38 W. O’Reilly St., about half a mile from where Thomas was killed.
Police said previously they didn’t believe the Thomas and Moye killings were linked, and Clegg said last week that the Dixon killing does not appear to be connected to either of the other two.
Clegg said shortly after the third killing that the Kingston Police Department, which has only eight detectives, was “maxed out.” Tinti said last week, though, that Kingston police are getting help in their investigations from state police, the Ulster County Sheriff’s Office and town of Ulster police.
Three homicides in
Kingston in a span of less than four months appears to be without precedent. In fact, it’s been rare in recent decades for Kingston to have more than one homicide per year, and the city sometimes has gone several years in a row without a killing.
It also is rare in Kingston for a homicide investigation not to result in an arrest in a relatively short period of time.
Before the Thomas shooting death in October 2019, the last homicide in Kingston was in November 2017, when Seth Lyons, 20, of Ulster Park, fatally beat Anthony Garro Jr., 49, beneath the Elmendorf Street overpass along an unused railroad corridor in Midtown.
Lyons was arrested just hours after Garro’s body was found, and he was convicted of second-degree murder in September 2018 and sentenced to 25 years to life in state prison.
Besides the three recent homicides, Kingston police also are investigating a nonfatal shooting on Franklin Street last December, a house being shot at on East St. James Street on Feb. 14, and a report of shots being fired in the area of the Rondout Gardens apartment complex on Feb. 16.