Saying he is “not at all happy with the initial investigation,” Ansonia Police Chief Kevin Hale said his department has relaunched a probe into a hit-and-run crash that left an Ansonia teenager seriously injured last year.
The development comes after the woman’s mother took to social media last month to ask why police hadn’t done more to look into the case.
“They’re upset,” Hale said Wednesday. “And they have a right to be.”
Police administrators are now exploring whether disciplinary measures should be taken against the officer who initially investigated the case.
The Hit-And-Run
At about 8:40 p.m. Oct. 24, 2011, Aliya Hamilton, 19, was walking home to LaRovera Terrace with a friend after a basketball game at the Boys and Girls Club when she tried to cross Pershing Drive near its intersection with Clifton Avenue.
Hamilton was hit by a northbound car. The impact tossed her more than 20 feet through the air.
The driver — possibly a white or Hispanic woman with curly hair in a Buick — kept going.
Hamilton lay wounded in the street.
Her mother, Andrea Bartley, was at home when she received a frantic phone call from her daughter’s friend, saying Aliya was badly hurt.
Bartley rushed to the scene and rode in the front of the ambulance on the trip to Yale-New Haven Hospital. She said she couldn’t ride in back with her daughter because there was too much blood.
She had to wait for hours at the hospital before seeing her daughter.
The image that greeted her wasn’t pretty.
Hamilton’s face was covered with blood. A wad of gauze taped to her forehead was the only thing preventing “the flesh and the bone hanging out,” Bartley said.
Hamilton broke a bone in her forehead above her left eye, had cuts and bruises all over her face and body, and spent three days in the hospital before being able to return home.
After, she said she had to live on a couch in her mother’s living room for weeks.
“I couldn’t walk upstairs. I couldn’t even walk to the kitchen,” she said. “I couldn’t eat anything. I lost 15 pounds within two days.”
“I couldn’t see,” Hamilton went on. “You know how like when you cry and your eyes are full of tears? My eyes were full of blood.”
The woman still suffers from memory loss due to being hit by the car.
In the video below, Hamilton has trouble describing what happened to her last year, so her mother steps in to help:
The Investigation
As Hamilton recovered, her friends and family tried to help police probe the crash in the days afterward.
They provided statements that night to Officer Matthew Diaz, the patrolman assigned to the case.
Then they went to the scene to canvas for witnesses and see if any businesses had surveillance cameras.
The family thought they hit pay dirt at Speed of Sound, a Pershing Drive mobile electronics business not far from where Hamilton was struck.
Bartley said family members went to the business the day after the accident and viewed video footage taken by the store’s surveillance camera. The video showed of a car similar to the one described by Hamilton speeding through the frame after the time of the accident.
Bartley told Officer Diaz about the video, but said the officer never retrieved it.
“He has not done anything,” Bartley said.
Melinton Benavides, the owner of Speed of Sound, said Wednesday that the surveillance system he has automatically erases footage after three days.
“They asked me for a copy but by the time they asked me for it it was already erased,” Benavides said. The business owner wouldn’t comment further, saying he was too busy.
Bartley said the missed opportunity with the video crystallizes her frustration with the police investigation.
The police report compiled by Diaz four days after the accident is three sentences long: “Hamilton was crossing Pershing Drive by Clifton Avenue, when an unknown vehicle struck and kept going without stopping. Witness states he was crossing Pershing Drive when a car came out of nowhere and struck Hamilton. Hamilton states she was crossing Pershing Drive, when a car made a left off of Clifton Ave onto Pershing Drive hitting her.”
The only enforcement action taken, according to the report — a verbal warning to Hamilton.
Growing increasingly frustrated, on April 23, six months after her daughter was hit, Bartley let loose an emotional, 744-word diatribe on Facebook under a photo of her injured daughter.
The Facebook post included a description of the vehicle and her anger at police and local media for ignoring her story.
“I AM APPEALING TO ANYONE IN THE ANSONIA/DERBY area of CT to please … if you, or someone you know has heard or seen anything, I know the car is still (being) driven and the driver is still behind that wheel,” Hamilton wrote.
Hamilton’s message spread around Facebook, including the Valley Independent Sentinel’s Facebook page.
It worked.
Going Forward
Hale said that he met with Bartley within the past three weeks. After hearing her concerns and reviewing the initial investigation, Hale assigned one of the department’s detectives, James Frolish, to re-investigate the case.
Hale said police are looking for a light-colored, four-door Buick that may have been involved, the driver of which was described as a white or Hispanic female in her 20s or 30s, with red, curly hair.
Hale asked anyone with information to call Detective Sgt. Patrick Lynch at 203 – 735-1885.
Bartley and Hamilton said that description of the suspected car and driver is the same one they gave to Diaz days after the accident.
The chief said police will review the initial probe to see if discipline is warranted, but first the department wants to find the hit-and-run driver that left Hamilton injured in the street last October.
“This case is a priority,” Hale said.
The chief said police are committed to getting to the bottom of what happened and will also look at the information previously provided by Bartley.
“We’re doing the best we can to do a thorough investigation at this point,” Hale said. “They’ve provided us very good information. As information comes in we run it down and go with it.”
Bartley said she wants the driver of the car that hit her daughter to be brought to justice, but is still disillusioned.
“I don’t know what to say,” she replied when asked whether she was encouraged by the recent police action. “They could have caught the person right there and then. It was their job to take care of that and they didn’t. The Ansonia Police Department didn’t do their job.”
Hale said the department will be diligent in its investigation.
“We are determined to find out who did it,” Hale said. “Whether we will be able to succeed in that, time will tell.”
