3 arrested on gun charges in connection with fatal shooting
Police: Grandson of prominent youth violence prevention worker shot on Memorial Day
Three Hartford teens have been arrested on gun and evidence tampering charges in connection with the shooting death of 19-year-old Makhi Buckly, whowas killed in broad daylight in the city’s Southwest neighborhood on Memorial Day, police announced Wednesday.
Jaquan Graham, 18, Omari Barrett, 19, and Tyrese Duckworth, 19, were arrested Tuesday and all remain in custody with bonds set at $3 million for Graham, $2 million for Barrett and $500,00 for Duckworth, court records show.
A police spokesman confirmed the arrests were linked to the killing of Buckly, a Division II football player at American International College in Springfield and grandson of Carl
Hardick, a lifelong street-violence prevention worker at Hartford’s Wilson-Gray YMCA.
The spokesman, Lt. Aaron Boisvert, did not elaborate.
“It is very important to note these individuals have NOT been charged with the Homicide,” Boisvert wrote in an email. “This is still an active
investigation.”
Graham was shot and injured in the October 2019 rolling gun battle that took the life of 71-year-old grandmother Yvonne Smith in the North End, which police believe was part of a series of shootings tied to at least two groups of young men who have feuded for years.
Graham was one of three teens in a stolen white Kia Sorrento that pulled alongside two men outside another car on Westland Street and opened fire in the middle of the afternoon of Oct. 24, 2019, court records obtained by the Courant show. The men on the street returned fire as the Sorrento tried to speed away, wounding Graham in the abdomen and left arm.
The Sorrento sped back through the scene in reverse, hitting and killing Smith, an innocent bystander who was out getting groceries at the time, before crashing into a building at Garden and Westland streets. Graham and the car’s driver, Kevin Amos Jr., tried to flee the scene but were found two blocks away on Enfield Street a few minutes later, court records show.
Amos was charged days later with first-degree manslaughter. Although juvenile case records are sealed and Amos was just 16 years old at the time, he is set to be tried as an adult, making his case records public.
Those records identify Graham as the 17-year-old wounded passenger whom police later charged with accessory to manslaughter, conspiracy to commit first-degree assault and carrying a pistol without a permit, though they did not name Graham publicly at the time due to his age.
Neither Barrett nor Duckworth have other pending criminal cases in adult court, records show.
On Wednesday afternoon, detectives were seen leaving Buckly’s home on Westland Street. Family at the home declined to speak to a reporter.
Hardrick said he was sad for the families of those arrested.
“Their lives won’t be the same, and my grandson’s life is gone, so it’s sad on both sides,” Hardrick said Wednesday at his home on Canterbury Street, where Buckly grew up. “What do we learn from this, how could we have avoided it? You have two families suffering; Whatever happened, somebody pulled the trigger. Somebody’s gonna pay for that.”
Barrett, Duckworth and Graham were charged with evidence tampering and conspiracy to commit evidence tampering, according to Harford police logs.
Additionally, Barrett was charged with carrying a pistol without a permit and illegal possession of a weapon in a motor vehicle; Duckworth was charged with illegal possession of a weapon in a motor vehicle; and Graham was charged with carrying a pistol without a permit.
Buckly was shot in his torso about 3:45 p.m. Monday outside 152 Amherst St., police said. He was taken to Hartford Hospital, where he was pronounced dead — the third teenager to be killed by gunfire in Hartford in 2021.
Homicides and gun violence are relatively rare in the city’s Southwest neighborhood, near Goodwin Park and the Wethersfield line. The shooting was not random, police said: Buckly is believed to have known the person who shot him. Graham, Barrett and Duckworth all live a few houses apart on Roger and Exeter streets, just around the corner from the Amherst address, records show.
Hardrick says that only makes the situation harder to understand.
“If he knew them, they knew you, then what the hell happened?” Hardrick said to one of the many friends who called to check on him Wednesday.
He doesn’t think Buckly, his only grandson, was close with the three teens who were arrested, or had any reason to be in that part of the city on Monday afternoon.
If it had been a nicer day, Buckly probably would have been at Hardrick’s house for a Memorial Day family cookout. But it was overcast and Hardrick was still deciding whether to get his family together when one of his granddaughters called and told him Buckly was shot.
After years of comforting young people and families in hospital waiting rooms, Hardrick suddenly found he was the one waiting for difficult news at Hartford Hospital, praying but harboring a bad feeling that his grandson was gone.
On Tuesday, friends, coaches and loved ones remembered Buckly as a competitive, hardworking athlete who loved the outdoors and wanted to play professional football so he could help support his family.
The teen’s homicide was the 15th murder through the first five months of the year in Hartford, according to police data.
The number represents the most murders in that time frame than in any of the past seven years, the data show, though it remains down significantly from the record highs of violence in the early to mid-1990s in both the capital city and across the country.