Stamford 17-year-old to be tried as adult in 2022 Lione Park attack

STAMFORD — A 17year-old Stamford resident will be tried as an adult in connection with a 2022 shooting and stabbing that left two other people injured.

Marlon Morales-Cante is charged with first-degree assault, conspiracy to commit first-degree assault, possession of weapons in a motor vehicle, carrying a dangerous weapon and first-degree reckless endangerment stemming from a shooting and stabbing that occurred at Lione Park on Oct. 24, 2022.

Morales-Cante, who was 16 at the time of the assaults, was arrested alongside his older brother, Henry Morales-Cante, on June 6, 2023, following a monthslong investigation by Stamford police.

Marlon Morales-Cante was charged as a juvenile at the time, though his case has since been transferred to the state Superior Court in Stamford’s Part A docket, where the district’s most serious cases are heard.

Investigator Luis Serna wrote in an arrest affidavit that the Morales-Cante brothers were two of four people who allegedly attacked another group.

During the attack, Serna wrote, a 17-year-old was stabbed in the back and an 18-year-old shot in the face with a BB gun. Both injured teens were transported to Stamford Hospital for treatment, Serna wrote.

The 17-year-old told police he and some friends were playing soccer at Lione Park on Oct. 24 when they noticed four men in masks sitting nearby in a car, the affidavit said.

He told police that he eventually went up to the car to “ask if there was a problem,” at which point he claimed he was punched in the face and then, later, stabbed in the back.

In the affidavit, the 18year-old who suffered BB pellet shots to the face corroborated the other teen’s account of what happened.

Serna wrote in the arrest affidavit that the 17year-old left the scene with the knife still in his back, only pulling the weapon out as he was on the way to the hospital. He later identified Henry MoralesCante as the person who stabbed him.

Some of the attack was caught on video.

The 18-year-old identified Marlon MoralesCante as the one who shot him in the face, Serna wrote in the affidavit.

A day after the assaults, police located and stopped the car described by the teens as being used at the time of the shooting and stabbing, according to the affidavit.

Investigators recovered a fully automatic rifle-styled BB gun in the trunk of the car, which Henry Morales-Cante claimed as his, according to the affidavit.

Henry Morales-Cante was charged at the time with possessing weapons in a motor vehicle and possession of a facsimile firearm.

During the stop, officers noted that Marlon Morales-Cante also resembled one of the men seen in the video of the attack, Serna wrote in the affidavit.

Neither of the MoralesCante brothers were charged at that time in regards to the shooting and stabbing. However, in an ensuing investigation, Marlon Morales-Cante told police that he and his older brother were at Lione Park on Oct. 24 when, he said, two guys pulled Henry Morales-Cante out of the car and “began fighting with him,” the affidavit said.

Marlon Morales-Cante said he then “stepped in” and shot one of the attackers with the BB gun, according to the affidavit.

Marlon Morales-Cante also said a friend allegedly handed Henry MoralesCante a knife, but he claimed “he does not know what happened after that,” Serna wrote in the affidavit.

Text messages obtained by police revealed that the two brothers, along with the two other friends, had gone to Lione Park looking for “a group that had confronted them” and had damaged a family member’s car, the affidavit said.

“Those guys want us to detonate them,” one text read, according to the affidavit. “And today I am going to kill them,” said another, the affidavit said.

In separate texts sent after the shooting and stabbing, Marlon MoralesCante said that they had “beat the (expletive) out of them at the field yesterday,” Serna wrote.

Both Morales-Cante brothers are next scheduled to appear in court on May 16.