Deadly gunfire victim found 12 hours later

Police say they returned to building the afternoon after getting call with vague details about shooting

A homicide victim wasn’t found in his Blue Hills Avenue apartment in Hartford until about 12 hours after he was shot Wednesday because no one reported there was gunfire inside the 18-unit building, police said Thursday.

Police received one call about gunfire in the area of the apartment building at 69 Blue Hills Ave. early Wednesday, shortly after midnight, police Lt. Aaron Boisvert said. Officers responded and found no sign of a shooting, such as a victim or casings, and no bullet holes on the outside of the building.

It wasn’t until about 12:45 p.m. Wednesday that police got a report of bullet damage in a common stairwell inside the U-shaped building. Officers checked on residents and discovered Zayon Collier, 25, dead inside an apartment, police said.

“We came here on citizens’ reports of bullet damage in one of the stairwells of a building on Blue Hills Avenue. Officers showed up and they found the bullet holes and also located shell casings,” Boisvert said. “At that point they started banging on doors, on one door they received no response on the third floor. They were able to get in there and found a deceased male with a gunshot wound.”

Boisvert said only one person called police — from a cellphone — about the overnight gunfire, and the information was vague. Police don’t go into peoples’ homes unless they have specific information that someone inside is, or was, in danger, he said.

He also said that someone at the scene told officers he thought the sound came from the street and was fireworks, he said.

“Officers came out here and did a thorough canvass of the area and found no evidence of gunfire whatsoever,” Boisvert said. “That’s because it all happened inside the building. The officers had no way of knowing that . ... We [ just] had an approximate area.”

Police believe Collier was targeted, but Boisvert didn’t have details about what may have led up to the fatal shooting. He said Thursday that they haven’t identified a suspect yet.

At a news conference late Wednesday afternoon, Boisvert said police would be speaking with neighbors and checking any

surveillance footage in the area.

Asked whether there was any forced entry into the building, Boisvert said police are unsure “how the [suspect] got in, if somebody let them in or if they live in the building.”

Police also were unsure whether anyone else was in the apartment with the victim at the time of the shooting.

“We don’t have any reason to believe that, but can’t rule it out,” Boisvert said. Police planned to search the apartment.

Dozens of residents gathered outside the apartment building after detectives arrived to investigate the homicide, the 24th police are investigating in Hartford this year.

The number of homicides in the capital city now tops the total number of murders in 2019, when 23 were recorded. If the deadly federal task force shooting on Jan. 6 is included, Hartford has had 25 homicides this year — the same number as in all of 2020, when law enforcement across the country began to grapple with rising gun violence amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Should the murder rate continue through the second half of the year, 2021 is on pace to be among the deadliest in the capital city in decades, topped only by the 55 murders recorded in 1994 at the height of the city’s gang wars and the 44 murders in 2003, when an arson at the Greenwood Health Center killed 16 in a single night.

Last week, on July 29, a Hartford man was killed in broad daylight in the North End. He was shot outside a corner store and died after crashing his car while trying to rush to a nearby hospital. Boisvert said on Thursday he didn’t have any evidence that the Wednesday fatal shooting is connected to this one or others.

Two more men were shot, one fatally, on Elliott Street later that night, police said.

Police said they also are investigating another shooting Wednesday that left two people suffering from injuries they are expected to survive. That shooting happened near Wethersfield Avenue around 3:30 p.m. and wounded a man in his 30s and one in his 50s, they said.

The investigations remain ongoing. Anyone with information is asked to call the Hartford police tip line at 860-722-8477 (TIPS).