Home security cameras spoil family’s attempt to cover up their role in fatal shooting

A Middletown family’s attempt to hide their involvement in a fatal shooting this spring backfired after police obtained footage from the security camera system set up inside their home, which not only captured the dispute leading up to the shooting outside but their deliberations about how to cover up their involvement afterward, new court records show.

Matthew O’banner, 20, was the prime suspect in the May 16 shooting that killed 25-yearold Tylon Hardy and originally agreed to turn himself in to Middletown police early this summer before vanishing for more than two months.

New court records released this week detail how Middletown detectives and U.S. Marshals secretly tracked O’banner’s mother’s car to an apartment in North Bergen, New Jersey, where he was hiding out until marshals took him into custody early last month.

O’banner was charged with murder, first-degree assault and four other offenses and was extradited to Connecticut in late August to be held on $2 million bond.

His mother, 54-year-old Michelle Sanders, and his girlfriend, 21-year-old Alexandra Vazquez, also were arrested in late August and were charged with interfering with police. Sanders was also charged with tampering with evidence, hindering prosecution and drug possession.

Although O’banner’s court records remain sealed, the 14-page arrest warrant application in Sanders’ case was released this week. It details the chaotic fight the day of the murder and how police used the family’s own indoor home security cameras and secret GPS tracking to unravel the family’s account of what happened.

‘Living in a movie’

Gunfire erupted just before 11 a.m. on May 16 when a large fight broke out in the intersection outside Sanders’ home on Stirling Court.

Police arrived to find Hardy unresponsive, suffering from gunshot wounds and bleeding from the mouth and ears and rushed him to Middlesex Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, records show. A second gunshot victim, a 17-year-old boy, arrived at the hospital in a private vehicle a few minutes later.

The second victim and videos shot by neighbors who witnessed the commotion outlined how a group spilled out of several cars and was shouting and fighting when a man emerged from the Stirling Court home and opened fire, hitting Hardy and the boy and scattering the crowd. The shooter chased after some of the crowd and cars peeled out in all directions, including the Honda parked in the Stirling Court home’s driveway.

Police located a black handgun behind the home and spotted the cameras on the outside of the house. Sanders told police her son had not been in the home since earlier that morning

and claimed she did not know when or how he left, according to the affidavit.

Detectives told Sanders they intended to search her house. When she declined to voluntarily allow police in, they secured the home and its contents while they obtained a search warrant, during which time Sanders tried to take a black backpack from the property, records show. Officers stopped her and returned the backpack to the house, where they later found it contained crack cocaine and heroin.

Vazquez spoke with police the next day and told detectives 21-year-old Nahkyn Durazzo had threatened her and O’banner and told her “they were all pulling up” on O’banner’s house immediately. She conceded she, O’banner, their child and O’banner’s mother were all at the home at the time and that O’banner was the only adult man in the house, but she claimed she did not know where he had gone after the shooting.

A trove of security camera footage from inside the home, including the accompanying audio, showed both Vazquez and Sanders knew otherwise, according to the warrant affidavit.

Both women pleaded with O’banner not to confront Durazzo after he’d called to warn that he and his crew would be “pulling up” on the house, according to the recordings.

When O’banner emerged from a bedroom holding a handgun, Sanders begged him to stop and offered to call the police to intervene in the inevitable fight.

A few minutes later, O’banner stormed out the front door and gunshots rang out.

O’banner fled and security cameras captured a hysterical Vazquez ran back into the home, shouting “he’s going to jail” followed by “he’s dead, somebody call the cops.”

Sanders and Vazquez huddled inside the home in the minutes after the shooting with Vazquez’s mother and sister as police swarmed the scene.

The women discussed how neighbors saw the entire incident unfold and that police would come for O’banner and Vazquez both.

“This is crazy, I feel like I’m living in a movie,” Sanders said before the video feeds ended.

No other footage was available after 11:42 a.m., indicating to detectives the rest of the security camera video was erased manually from one of the hubs used to control the system inside the home.

Secret trackers

Middletown detectives obtained an arrest warrant charging O’banner with murder at the end of May and received word from an attorney that he wanted to voluntarily turn himself in.

Detectives and the attorney arranged to meet O’banner at the attorney’s office on June 14, but he never showed, and the next week detectives asked the U.S. Marshals for help locating him.

Sanders brought her Audi Q5 to be serviced at a New York dealership around the same time and was given a “loaner” Audi in the interim, which marshals learned regularly transmits its location whenever the engine shuts down. Those transmissions showed the car visited the North Bergen address of an associate of Sanders the last weekend of June.

Marshals secretly placed a GPS tracker on Sanders’ personal Audi while it was at the dealership and began tracking it when she picked it up on July 1, noting the car repeatedly transmitted its location from that North Bergen address throughout the month.

On Aug. 4, the marshals set up a secret live video surveillance feed of the North Bergen address and within hours spotted all three — O’banner, Vazquez and Sanders — entering the apartment there.

U.S. Marshals took O’banner into custody the following morning, and he was eventually extradited to Connecticut.

He was ordered held on $2 million bond. The next day, Sanders and Vazquez also were arrested and charged.

O’banner remains in custody and is scheduled to appear in court on Sept. 14. Sanders was released after posting a $250,000 bond, and Vazquez was released on a promise to appear in court. Both are due back before a judge later this month.