New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Back to normal?
At site of shootings, that’s a relative term
BRANFORD — On the surface, things seemed to be getting back to normal Friday in the neighborhood off Main Street and Cherry Hill Road where Matthew Walker fired a multitude of bullets Tuesday, injuring one neighbor in a seven-hour standoff during which he apparently took his own life.
But in this case, “normal” is a very relative term.
To all of those most deeply touched by what happened, despite their gratitude that things didn’t turn out any worse, things most definitely were not normal.
The lights were back on Friday — at least for part of the day — at Shoreline Wine & Spirits, where owner Ashwin Patel was shot in the leg while outside a few dozen yards west of 241 Main St., where Walker was holedup in his second-floor apartment.
The store had been back open since Thursday. Patel’s wife, Sushila, who normally works at her own job elsewhere, was behind the counter.
She said her husband was expected to be released from Yale-New Haven Hospital sometime Friday night. But when a reporter wished the family well and said he was glad her husband was OK, she was very clear in her response.
“He’s not OK,” Sushila Patel said, politely but firmly.
But she did say she was glad he was coming home.
A few minutes later, at about 2:30 p.m., in the middle of a slow, cold and rainy Friday that saw few customers, Sushila Patel closed up shop and went home.
Patel’s son, Hershel Patel, previously thanked the public for an outpouring of support since his father was shot. As of Friday evening, an online GoFundMe campaign had raised more than $17,000 to support Patel and his family while he recovers.
Hershel Patel said early Friday evening that his father did indeed return home and was recovering there.
Two doors down at the Leon James International Hair Salon — directly below Walker’s apartment at 241 Main — the Connecticut State Police Central District Major Crime Squad van was gone from the parking lot. All the state and town detectives were gone from the Country Plaza shopping center across Main Street, where shoppers were back at Richlin and other stores.
The salon was back open, but things weren’t at all normal for proprietor Leon James.
He took just a minute or so away from the customer in his chair to say he wasn’t really interested in talking about what happened.
“It’s not really my story to tell,” said James, who had a fruit bouquet that a well-wisher had sent over on a table next to the door. “I’m still processing it.”
Next-door neighbor John Chambers, owner of Shelley’s Garden Center — who had to duck behind pallets of mulch and hay Tuesday when he got caught outside in the middle of one of Walker’s volleys and some return fire from police — was relieved as he wrapped plastic wrap around tables of juvenile flowers to protect them from Friday’s wind and raw weather.
But the past two nights, he said, he had woken up with his heart pounding in the middle of the night. Thursday night, he felt compelled to go get checked out by a doctor to make sure it wasn’t a heart issue, he said.
While police had cleared the scene, they were still hard at work investigating what happened, including trying to figure out how Walker, who owned an East Haven moving business, 2 Bros and a Truck, with his twin brother, Brandon Walker, came to be in that situation, said Deputy Police Chief John Alves.
“We’re interviewing a lot of people,” said Alves. “We’re just trying to gather facts.”
While Branford detectives and members of the State Police Major Crimes Squad still were trying to figure out what happened with Walker, they had ruled out some things that had been rumored, such as the possibility that Walker had rigged bombs or other explosives in the house.
Alves said that was not the case.
He also said it was “100 percent fair to say that we don’t” yet know exactly how Walker came to be the man with multiple firearms sitting up in a second-story perch shooting out of a window.
“We’re trying to piece together” what happened, Alves said.
Just as police were trying to piece together the psychology of what drove Walker to do what he did, people who knew him still couldn’t believe it and had trouble squaring the Matt Walker they read or heard about in this week’s news with the one they knew.
Christine Bimonte of Branford, who said she has known Walker for more than 15 years, was shocked when he was identified as the shooter and said it was alarming to many in the recovery community.
“It was a shock to find out it was him. It’s a shock to everybody,” Bimonte said. “He was one of the nicest men I ever met.”
Bimonte said she had not spoken to him in two years but communicated with him through Instagram. He had been planning to go out to brunch with a friend of hers this weekend, she said.
Bimonte said she works in the field of addiction and she met Walker early in her recovery.
“What we would talk about is my recovery,” she said. “He was there — he was there for me.” Walker’s death “was a tragedy in the recovery world, I can tell you that,” she said.
“He wasn’t someone who just came in and out of AA,” she said. “He just made an impact when you met him — he was impactful. This is very impactful on us — because he was one of us,” Bimonte said. “He was remarkable. This is devastating.”
She blamed the pandemic for his behavior.
“Honestly it’s this pandemic that has put people over the edge,” Bimonte said. People who are recovering addicts are especially vulnerable, she said.
“This is a direct result, I feel, from the lack of resources, people isolating, financial, emotional and mental,” she said. “What we do need as human beings? We need human contact. Our worst enemy is isolation.”
Whatever people might have heard or read about Walker recently, “He helped out so many people in his life,” Bimonte said.
In her case, he helped her out in a very practical way. “He gave me a bed,” Bimonte said. “He gave me a bed for my daughter.”
Bimonte said she regrets that she was not there to help Walker.
“I just wish that someone who knew him personally ... could have gotten to him” on Tuesday, she said.