Police surrounded a house on Ansonia’s May Street for about eight hours Thursday after a nearby road rage incident led to shots fired in front of the home.
Cops surrounded the house, where witnesses told them the shooter had holed up inside, and called in a heavily armed special response team in an effort to get the man to surrender peacefully.
But when the special response team searched the house about 8 p.m., they found the home empty.
“The last known information that we were given from witnesses was that he had climbed in a window and was possibly on the third floor,” Ansonia Police Lt. Andrew Cota, the department’s spokesman, said. “He was not there when we got there. We didn’t find a weapon or anything of the sort.”
Cota said police believe they know who the man is and will work to confirm his identity and apply for a warrant for his arrest.
The incident began about 12:30 p.m. at the intersection of Day and Crescent streets, Cota said, with a dispute over a driver running a stop sign.
The two vehicles involved ended up in front of 14 May St., where the occupants of the vehicles got into a fight in the street.
A male friend of one of the people involved in the fight came out of the house, Cota said, got involved in the fracas, then went back into the house and returned with a handgun, firing two shots in the direction of the people on the street.
The man does not live at the home, but was visiting a friend there, Cota said.
Police said four to six people were involved in the dispute. Some suffered bumps and bruises in the initial fight, but no one was hit by the gunshots.
The man fled the area on foot, Cota said, but witnesses claimed he had gone back into the house.
Police then surrounded the home and called in a regional special response team that arrived about 3:30 p.m.
Meanwhile, the house’s owner arrived on scene and gave detectives keys to the front door and signed a consent form letting police inside without a search warrant.
The homeowner declined to talk to a reporter.
The special response team drove an armored vehicle to the front of the house, imploring the man repeatedly to surrender peacefully as dozens of nearby residents watched anxiously from sidewalks and front porches.
“Come out now,” an officer called out on a loudspeaker dozens of times over the course of several hours. “Help us resolve this so no one gets hurt.”
About 5:30 p.m., a New Haven police bomb squad truck arrived at the scene.
Cops used a robot from the bomb squad vehicle to look inside the house before sending in the special response team, Cota said.
The special response team cleared the house about 8:30 p.m.
“We’ll continue our investigation both into the assault itself, the fight initially, as well as any weapons charges that this male may face,” Cota said afterward. “We are aware of who he is, we believe that that’s the shooter at this point, we’re going to continue to do that investigation to make sure we have a positive ID to do any arrest warrants that we need to.”
