Help from public hastened arrest
City police official hails ‘cooperation from a lot of folks’; suspect jailed without bail
KINGSTON, N.Y. » Without assistance from local residents and video evidence from multiple sources, police would not have been able to make an arrest in Sunday’s fatal shooting on Liberty Street as quickly as they did, Kingston Police Department Detective Lt. Thierry Croizer said Wednesday.
Truvock Noble, 45, also known as Jeffrey Ali, who authorities describe as “homeless from Kingston,” was arrested in the Dutchess County town of Fishkill early Tuesday, less than 48 hours after Erick D. Crawford was fatally shot, and was charged with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
Noble was arraigned Wednesday by Kingston City Judge Lawrence Ball and sent to the Ulster
County Jail without bail. The suspect is represented by Kingston attorney William Pretsch.
Crawford, 38, of Kingston, was shot once in the torso and once in the thigh shortly before 1:30 p.m. Sunday near 14 Liberty St., just off Broadway, in Midtown Kingston, according to police. He died about 2½ hours later at HealthAlliance Hospital’s Broadway Campus in Kingston.
The investigation was slowed a bit by one individual who was telling others not to speak with police, Croizer said, but nevertheless, “cooperation from a lot of folks helped us to bring this to a conclusion.”
“People expect it to be like it is on TV,” but police investigations rarely succeed without the assistance of community members, he said.
Croizer said, though, that he understands the reluctance of some people to come forward.
“Sometimes they’re afraid,” he said. “... It takes the help of the community. We can’t do this by ourselves . ... We have to have the community behind us. Without it, we’re stuck.”
Croizer said police were able to obtain video surveillance footage from various locations “that helped us identify and make an arrest.” It also was advantageous to investigators that the shooting happened during daylight hours, he said.
“Yesterday at 4 p.m., I hadn’t been home in over 30 hours, and it wasn’t just me, but our detectives and detectives from other agencies,” Croizer said Wednesday.
Without “manpower and resources” from the town of Ulster and Fishkill police departments, the Ulster County Sheriff’s Office, the county District Attorney’s Office and state police, the case might have remained unsolved, he said.
Croizer said investigators have yet to determine a motive for the shooting. He said Noble has an arrest record that consists of “drug charges, for the most part,” but he did not say whether Sunday’s shooting might have been drug-related.
“This is an investigation, so I don’t want to make any assumptions,” he said.
Croizer also said police “are not sure” why Noble was in Fishkill at the time of his arrest, and he would not say whether the handgun allegedly used in the killing had been recovered.