New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
‘He could have shot me’ Witnesses recount fear of gunfight
BRANFORD — John Chambers, owner of Shelley’s Garden Center, and several neighbors who also were in the line of fire during Tuesday’s seven-hour standoff with a wellarmed man in a second-floor apartment of a house at 241 Main St., all know that it could have been so much worse.
They’re all brutally aware that instead of standing outside talking about it on Wednesday, they could be hospitalized like neighbor Ashwin Patel, owner of Shoreline Wine & Spirits, who had non-life-threatening injuries after being shot and, according to his son, still was in the hospital Wednesday.
They could be fighting for their lives.
Tearful relatives could be planning their funerals.
Chambers, whose family has owned the garden center next door at 217 Main St. since 1950 — and who was one of the first to see the shooter up in a window with a direct line of sight to him and may have been the first to call 911 — doesn’t think the fact that he’s still here to talk about it was a mistake.
“If he wanted to hit people, he would have,” Chambers, who on Tuesday hid behind pallets full of bags of mulch for several minutes, said Wednesday morning.
“My truck is destroyed” and there are bullets in the side of the house, “but it’s no big deal,” Chambers said. “He didn’t shoot anybody.”
Police Chief Jonathan Mulhern late Wednesday identified the shooter as Matthew Walker. Police earlier said investigators believe he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The state medical examiner Wednesday confirmed the suspect in the incident had died by suicide.
After Chambers, a gun owner, first went outside after hearing what he knew were gunshots, “he could have shot me,” he said. “I could see him!”
While things had calmed down considerably by Wednesday, Branford and state police investigators remained in the area, centered around the corner of Main Street and Cherry Hill Road — and signs of what happened were everywhere.
— Multiple bullet holes in the garden center’s 20-foot box truck, which also had its passenger-side window and front tire shot out.
— Bullet holes in a house on the Garden Center’s property.
— Bullet holes in the gas pumps, on a side wall and in a customer’s Acura next door at Pepe’s Service Station, located just west of Shelley’s at 177 Main St.
— At least one bullet hole in the front window of Angel Paws Dog Grooming & Spa, located across the street at 214 Main St.
When Chambers, who practices target shooting, heard the first shots, “I knew exactly what it was — and it was so loud,” he recalled. “I knew it was close.”
But the shooter, “never took a shot at me,” Chambers said.
Chambers met Walker three or four weeks ago when Walker was locked out of his apartment, located above the Leon James International Hair Studio at Main Street and North Harbor Street, Chambers said. After Walker initially asked to borrow a ladder, “I picked him up with a forklift to get him in a second-story window,” Chambers said.
When the shooting started — Chambers estimated the man fired dozens of rounds before police even got there — Chambers was there with his two daughters, a niece and two or three family friends, in addition to one or more customers, he said.
“I laid out here” in front “until he started shooting at the Branford Police Department, then I went back inside,” Chambers said.
For the first few minutes of that exchange, Chambers was on the phone with a 911 dispatcher, “telling her what he was shooting at,” he said. “He was shooting a lot of rounds off, but he wasn’t hitting anybody.”
His daughter Taylor ChambersScussel, who also was there, said, “It was quite an interesting experience to live through. You could hear the bullets ricocheting off of everything.”
When it all started, “My 8-yearold and 10-year-old were playing in the back yard,” she said.
“The Lord was with us,” said Chambers-Scussel, who said she went to high school with one of the officers on the South Central Regional SWAT Team and recognized one East Haven police officer who was there as her neighbor. “The police and law enforcement were amazing.”
Patel’s son, Herschel Patel of Branford, said of his father, “He’s OK. He had surgery yesterday. He will be in the hospital for a couple of days.”
But overall, “I still have a father. My mother still has a husband,” Herschel Patel said. “It’s all right.”
A member of the community, Sarah Routh, set up a GoFundMe fundraiser Wednesday morning to help support Patel and his family during his recovery. The fund, which set an initial goal of $10,000, had received more than $6,800 in contributions by midafternoon Wednesday. It can be found at https://bit.ly/3dhmZU8.
Larry Stoup, owner of Pepe’s Service Station, tended to Ashwin Patel’s wounds until SWAT team members could evacuate him.
“He was bleeding pretty good,” but Stoup helped control the bleeding with compresses, he said.
Stoup, a former Branford volunteer firefighter, said he was up Branford Hill getting some auto parts when the shots began and was rushed indoors by his employees when he returned, who told him, “Get your butt in here!”
He also sheltered three customers and bystanders, one of whom was 86, he said.
Asked whether he was afraid, Stoup, also a gun owner, said, “I was in the Fire Department. I kept cool, calm and collected and did what I had to do.”
He estimated that between the shooter and the police, “there had to be 100 rounds, at least.”
As he spoke, he was standing just a few feet away from the bullet hole-pocked windshield of a customer’s Acura.
Still, “it could have been a lot worse,” Stoup said. “Everybody was really lucky — even Ashwin next door.”
Across Main Street, Angel Paws Dog Grooming owner Colleen Hainsworth was parked in her car in a driveway behind the business, off Cherry Hill Road, waiting to talk to police. Her business remained closed, she said.
It was still a crime scene. Hainsworth said she felt fortunate that Angel Paws was closed Tuesday while she attended the funeral of her uncle, who died from a COVID-19-related illness.
She was leaving the cemetery when “my whole purse started to shake” with friends and loved ones calling and texting to check on her well-being.
When she looked at the phone, every message began with “Are you OK?” she said.
When she arrived back in Branford, she saw a bullet hole in one of her front windows.
“It’s a little nerve-wracking,” Hainsworth said, “but everything can be replaced.”
Other agencies on the scene Tuesday included the Branford Fire Department, the New Haven Police Department Bomb Squad, and officers from the New Haven, Madison, Guilford and East Haven police departments, Mulhern said. The South Central Regional SWAT Team, which includes officers from several area police departments, also responded.