A 19-year-old man was arrested in connection with a Tuesday afternoon shooting at a Connecticut mall that wounded five people, police said.
Tajuan Washington, 19, of Waterbury, Conn., was charged with five counts of first-degree assault and related weapons violations, authorities said Wednesday at a press conference. He’s being held on a $2 million bond and is expected to be arraigned later Wednesday.
The shooting at the Brass Mill Center in Waterbury started after an altercation Tuesday afternoon, officials said.
Governor Ned Lamont described it as a “terrible tragedy,” which was sparked by “some sort of a beef [or] argument” between people who knew each other.
“These are not random acts of violence,” Lamont said. “This type of crime is just shocking to me.”
Shots were heard just before 5 p.m., leading to a chaotic scene with people running for their lives, according to local media reports.
Waterbury Police Chief Fernando Spagnolo said people “went with their instincts” and sheltered in place as police arrived. “They were very cooperative in assisting with law enforcement’s efforts to make the scene safe,” he said.
According to Gov. Lamont, police arrived in about three minutes.
Five people were wounded in the shooting and were transferred to nearby hospitals, police said. The victims range in age from 18 to mid-20s.
According to the mayor, the “one-off incident” stemmed from a confrontation between “two young men who knew each other, had a history and a past.”
“They got into a beef here. There were four young women with the victim, and so the perpetrator, when he was called out — instead of having what would’ve been, at one time, a fistfight, but because he was armed — came out with a pistol, shot the guy he was having a problem with and the four women who were with him, as well.”
Three of them have since been released, police said Wednesday. The remaining two are said to be in stable condition, Mayor Paul Pernerewski told reporters.
The most “seriously injured” patient was a “young lady who was hit in the spine, but she does now have some feeling in her extremities” and doctors are hopeful she will not be paralyzed, Pernerewski told reporters.
