It is an issue that touches ever corner of our state: gun violence. Police, state leaders, advocates and community members are all working on solutions.
It is a sad and familiar scene in the capital city: flashing lights, police tape at the scene, followed by vigils and grieving families.
Here's how police departments across the state are turning a corner to combat the issue.
Hartford sees downward trend
Data from Hartford police shows the downward trend in gun crimes since 2020. In 2023, there were 97 non-fatal shootings and 28 deadly shootings: 125 gun-related injuries last year, compared to 223 back in 2020.
“That sounds like a lot, it is,” Hartford Police Lt. Aaron Boisvert said. “But it's down 26% from last year, it's down 25% from the year before and from 2020, it’s down 46%."
The numbers in Hartford align with a national downward trend in gun violence since the pandemic.
A survey of U.S. cities, conducted in mid-2024 by the Council on Criminal Justice, found that homicide rates in 30 selected cities had declined by 10% compared to 2022. Still, rates in those cities remained 24% higher than pre-pandemic levels.
Hartford police keep track of both non-fatal shootings and homicides when tracking gun violence. In 2020, there was a 50% increase in gun violence overall, according to the same Crime Trends in U.S. Cities: Mid-Year 2023 Update. Gun violence decreased by 21% in 2022, but still remained 22% higher than pre-pandemic levels of 2019. Then last year, there was a change.
The year 2023 had an additional 28% decrease, compared to the year prior, and gun violence was 13% lower than 2019.
In 2023, fatal and nonfatal shootings combined were at their lowest level in a decade, since 2014. Non-fatal shootings were at their lowest level since 2006, which is the earliest year that Hartford Police Department shooting statistics are available.
I don't want to jinx ourselves, but we've had quite a lull. We had weeks where we had no shootings, which is great.
Lt. Aaron Boisvert
Boisvert credits a few strategies to the downturn. For one, he said the Violent Crime Unit has dramatically amped up firearms seizures in the last decade, recovering 384 last year.
Then there is a Shooting Response Team that visits surviving victims. The six-member unit tires to glean information and break the culture of silence that surrounds gun violence. However, Boisvert sees the most impactful effort as targeting key players.
“There are a handful of individuals who are certainly catalysts for violence in the city, whether or not they're shooters, or being shot at, or creating situations that create gun violence,” he said. “I think last year, we did a great job, we made quite a few arrests for gun violence.”
Going into 2024, Boisvert is optimistic about one aspect of new state legislation, House Bill 6667, An Act Addressing Gun Violence. It raises bond for serious firearm offenders from a minimum percentage of 10% to 30% in order for that person to be released on bail.
Easton woman loses both of her parents to gun violence
Tara Donnelly has been advocating for new laws since her mom and dad were shot and killed at their jewelry store in Fairfield.
She said the shooting forever altered her life. Now, she explains how she copes with losing both of her parents, and the cause she has taken on to try to tackle gun violence.
Feb. 2 is a milestone that is painful for Donnelly to face. On that day in 2005, she lost both of her parents in a shooting.
“To have such a peaceful life, and such a violent way to leave it, is difficult to grasp,” Donnelly said.
Kim and Tim Donnelly were familiar faces in downtown Fairfield, where they owned a jewelry store.
“My dad, he had the gift of gab and would just talk to people,” Donnelly said. “Everyone who came in the store left thinking that they were his best friend. And they were.”
In 2005, the couple was preparing to close when a young man entered the store and asked to buy an engagement ring. As he approached the counter, he pulled out a gun.
“He shot my dad five times, and my dad died instantly,” Donnelly said. “My mom turned to call the police, but she was shot six times.”
Donnelly was 23 years old. Just a few weeks earlier, her parents had helped her move to New York.
I got a phone call that said there had been a robbery and I needed to go home. It's an awful phone call for anyone. And the reality is, is that every American is just a phone call away from being in my shoes.
Tara Donnelly
It's why Donnelly has spent the past 19 years working to prevent others from experiencing an immeasurable loss.
Speaking alongside gun safety advocates this week, Donnelly said that Christopher Dimeo, who is serving a life sentence for her parents’ deaths, stole a gun from the nightstand of a home he broke into before going to the Donnelly’s jewelry store.
“It was accessing a gun that he could not have legally purchased that allowed him to take two of the most important people in my life,” Donnelly said at a news conference on Wednesday.
Along with Democratic U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro, and Kristin Song, who lost her son Ethan in an accident with an unsecured gun, Donnelly is pushing for expanded legislation on securing firearms. She has traveled to the White House to advocate for legislation that supports securing guns many times before.
Now, with young children of her own, Donnelly said she keeps pushing to turn pain into purpose.
“I now have two kids who never got to know their grandparents,” Donnelly said. “It's difficult for me to think about how different the trajectory of my life would have been if that gun had instead been secured.”
Parents shift focus to saving lives on anniversary of son's death
Kristin and Mike Song have made it their mission to spread a little kindness, and help save a life with the Ethan Song Memorial blood drive.
It's held in honor of their son, Ethan, who was killed six years ago.
Ethan’s mom, Kristin, said before the 15-year-old died, his greatest trait was empathy. He fostered 95 dogs over his lifetime, and Kristin said other parents told her he stood up to bullies, and always made sure kids at school saw a friendly face at the cafeteria.
“I always told my kids that there was nothing that we couldn't get through together. And I feel like I lied to them. Because I just never in a million years thought that I would lose a child,” Kristin said.
Ethan died on Jan. 31, 2018.
“That morning, Ethan got his braces off, and he asked if we could go out to breakfast to celebrate,” Kristin said. “It was probably the most meaningful conversation I've had with Ethan. I sometimes think it was God's way of letting him say goodbye to me.”
Over that meal, Ethan explained to his mom that he wanted help those who are vulnerable and marginalized, join the military to honor his grandmother, who was a Holocaust survivor, and eventually, get married and have seven children.
Afterwards, once they were home, Kristin said Ethan walked down the street from their Guildford home to a friend’s house. There, he accidentally shot himself with a gun that was left unsecured.
“I remember that I was almost unconscious, and hitting my arm just to try to...hopefully it was a dream,” Mike Song, Ethan’s father, said.
Ethan’s parents were at the hospital when they learned he had passed away.
“The minute those words came out of the ER doctor’s mouth, I died with Ethan. The old mom died with Ethan,” Kristin said.
While six years have passed, the pain has not.
You can't even put into words what it's like to lose a child...It's like holding your hand over a live flame, but never having the option to remove it. It's soul crushing.
Kristin Song
While life is forever changed for the family, today, they aim to turn pain into purpose.
First, the Songs lobbied in Connecticut for Ethan’s Law, which passed in 2019. It requires firearms to be securely stored in homes with children. Then, the law expanded to all households last year.
“That gun sitting on that bookshelf or sitting on the nightstand, with your kids running around, that's a lethal weapon in the hands of a 5-year-old child,” Mike said.
Now they are taking their fight to Washington, with Kristin just lobbying at the White House last week. In 2022, Ethan’s Law passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, but it did not in the Senate.
Now, Connecticut lawmakers introduced the bill in Congress to make Ethan's Law a federal law, but they say it will need Republican support to push through.
“We're here to simplify it,” Mike said. “There's a kid named Ethan. He's not here anymore. Let's make sure your kids are here tomorrow.”
At the annual blood drive, Kristin said today, they hope to shift the focus from death to life.
“When your child dies, your biggest fear is that he's going to be forgotten, and this is a way of just continuing to honor Ethan and keep his memory alive," Kristin said.
Inside the trauma units of Hartford’s biggest hospitals
It is a common scene at trauma centers in Harford: patients rushed in with gunshot wounds.
“We're pulling staff from the emergency room to come in care for that patient, our trauma team responds,” Taylor Fusco-Ruiz, Saint Francis Trauma Program nurse manager, said.
It often prompts an all-hands-on-deck response.
“At any one time during the resuscitation, there might be upwards of 10 to 12 people sometimes,” Dr. Jonathan Gates, Harford Hospital chief of trauma, said.
Although police say gun violence is down from levels the capital city saw during pandemic-years, most of those gunshot victims end up in a trauma unit at one of Harford’s two biggest hospitals: Hartford Hospital or Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center.
“On a weekend, sometimes we have anywhere from five to 10,” Gates said. “Our hope was that that would pass by as COVID dissolved into history. And unfortunately, the gun violence has continued.”
While both Level 1 trauma centers are equipped with the infrastructure and specialized medical staff to absorb an influx of gunshot wound victims, these cases can put a strain on resources.
“It definitely pulls. Every time we have an add trauma activation, we have resources coming from all different departments,” Fusco-Ruiz said. “If it's our highest level of activation, we have folks from the operating room, respiratory therapy. So it kind of puts a pause on did it on whatever is occurring at that moment.”
They are life-saving efforts that often pay off, but cannot always be a success. These medical professionals say that they are trained to focus on saving lives and to compartmentalize tragedy. Yet they are not immune to emotional reactions.
I can speak for myself, it does take a toll, there’s no question about it, seeing these patients come in day in and day out.
Dr. Jonathan Gates
“It can be really impactful, especially, we unfortunately have had a lot of younger patients lately come in. You can't always prepare for that,” Fusco-Ruiz said.
It is why there are support systems set up for the medical staff. Both hospitals are also working to be part of the solution, utilizing hospital-based interventionists.
“Having people that can be that middleman between the community and between the hospital is so important,” Fusco-Ruiz said.
Those specialists provide support for the patient bedside, speak with the family and after discharge, they connect the victim with partner organizations in the community. Efforts to stem a cyclical problem, and save lives.
“The more we interact with these patients in try to understand what the root cause of these problems are, the more we get involved in those solutions,” Gates said. “We do know that this is a preventable problem.”
DPH declares community violence a public health issue
The CT Department of Public Health has now declared gun violence a public health issue. DPH is taking measures to address it, even creating a new department to specifically focus on the ongoing crisis.
Juthani said the designation of gun violence as a public health issue is important when it comes to tackling the problem.
“When you take a problem and view it through a public health lens, you actually are taking data and looking at interventions that show that the evidence base shows that it works. And then funding things accordingly. And then evaluating it,” she said.
Those are the concrete steps a brand new DPH office will be taking.
“I wanted to create an Office of Firearm Injury Prevention,” Juthani said. “Really it's in this last year that we took that initial support from the legislature to say we think the Public Health Department has a role to play in this.”
Three employees are already hired: a program leader, a health program associate and an epidemiologist. They will start in their positions within a month.
“Who are the people that are affected? What are things you can do to intervene? You double down on those efforts, and you start to see things going down,” Juthani said.
Yet the commissioner said this is just the beginning. The new Office of Firearm Injury Prevention will need to address other types of gun violence going forward: including intimate partner violence, mass shootings and suicide.
Juthani said a multi-pronged approach that includes public health could lead to some solution.
“We need partners from across the spectrum, whether it be law enforcement, judicial, public health,” she said. “This isn't a problem that can be solved by public health alone. I'm just saying that public health also has a voice to bring to this.”
Hartford Public Schools support students exposed to trauma
Tackling gun violence is work that Hartford Public Schools educators say they sadly know well. Recently, two students were shot and killed outside of school.
Police investigating, yellow tape: it was a devastating scene for two school communities, after 19-year-old Lavante Brown and 16-year-old Aydin Davis were shot and killed during a party at an apartment on Saturday. Both teens attended schools in Hartford.
“Gun violence can have a huge impact on children,” Jocelyn Sailor, district social work coach, said. “A lot of students are experiencing gun violence in their community, and that then comes with them inside of the schools.”
Social workers are part of the school district’s Crisis Intervention Team, on hand to help in the wake of such loss.
The cases they work on do not always involve student victims: sometimes it is a kid’s family member, friend or a child has witnessed violence in their neighborhood.
“That can affect students in various ways, in regards to feeling safe to walking back and forth to school,” Sailor said.
Beyond feeling physically unsafe and disconnected from their community, these social workers say the trauma is evident in other ways, too, such as having a hard time focusing, feeling stressed out and more.
“Their day to day response to stressors might be exaggerated, because of the events that they've been exposed to,” Joanne Tremblay Jackson, director of Student Support Services, said.
Superintendent Dr. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez has also witnessed all of these devastating effects on students.
Even before the latest violence that led to the loss of two students, Superintendent Dr. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez said gun violence has been a pervasive problem for Hartford schools.
“It is something that our students come to school with,” Torres-Rodriguez said. “We don't want that to happen for any of our young people.”
The best way schools can respond, she says, is with mental health support. It is why the school district works with partner organizations like COMPASS Peacebuilders, The Village For Families & Children and Mothers Against Violence, among many others.
Within Hartford Pubic Schools, efforts go toward tackling gun violence on three levels: prevention, small group work in classrooms and specialized clinical work for trauma.
The team hopes to build a bridge of trust, not just to respond to tragedy, but to evade it.
