Just before 2 a.m. May 12, 2012, Quandre Howell held Javon Zimmerman in his arms on the pavement outside a Derby bar.
Moments earlier, Zimmerman had been shot twice. He had less than a minute to live.
With his last breaths he repeated “Beans,” Howell’s nickname, over and over again.
When Derby police were looking for information and witnesses, they grilled Howell while he was wearing a shirt with Zimmerman’s picture on it, mourning his friend’s demise. At times during the interview, he seemed on the verge of tears.
Yet he still wouldn’t ID the shooter.
The law of the streets.
Frustrated, Derby Police Lt. Justin Stanko ordered a wardrobe change.
“I made him turn the shirt inside out,” Stanko testified Thursday.
The lieutenant said he then sent Howell — who was facing drug charges at the time — to a holding cell.
And soon enough, Howell was spotted on the a closed-circuit camera monitoring the cell with the shirt turned right-side-out again.
“He was essentially doing jumping jacks … pointing to the shirt,” Stanko said.
Howell gave police a statement implicating Cordaryl Silva, on trial for the killing this week.
Silva: Let Me Talk Now
After three days of watching a prosecutor elicit that and other testimony against him in Zimmerman’s death, Silva plans to take the stand Friday, even though his lawyer is urging him not to do it.
The lawyer, Lawrence Hopkins, told Judge Denise Markle after testimony in the trial ended Thursday that Silva wanted to be called as a witness, though Hopkins held out hope his client might change his mind.
“My understanding is that Mr. Silva’s current intention, as of this very moment, is that he would like to testify,” Hopkins told the judge.
Silva’s decision comes after Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Charles Stango and police witnesses on Thursday finished building a methodical case against him.
Click here for a story about the first day of testimony at the trial.
Click here for a story about the second day of testimony.
I’m Not Trying To Duck
On Thursday the jury listened to audio recordings of two conversations Silva had in the days after the shooting with Ansonia police.
At the time of the talks, the cops — Ansonia Police Detectives Kristen Hunt and Matthew Macero — knew Silva well.
Assigned to the department’s anti-crime unit to investigate drug dealing in the Valley, the two had been meeting weekly with Silva for months as he provided them with information in a drug probe focused on Zimmerman, the man he now stands accused of killing.
As the recordings played Thursday, Hunt sat on the witness stand and offered background on years of murder and mayhem connected to the Valley drug dealing scene.
Taken in sum, authorities say the incidents — to which Silva continually referred in his talks with investigators — show that a long-running feud Silva had with Zimmerman’s crew came to a boiling point outside the Derby bar.
Hunt said as much to Silva three days after the shooting during a conversation Silva had with the two cops in an unmarked police car in an Ansonia parking lot.
Silva talked to Ansonia police several times in the hours and days after the shooting, as detectives were trying to build a case.
“None of us are surprised by this,” Hunt said to Silva, telling him that cops had figured either he or Zimmerman might end up dead, and that he would probably be arrested soon for Zimmerman’s death.
“I know that,” Silva replied. “I’m not trying to duck that.”
Self-Defense?
On the recordings, Silva conceded he would probably be charged, but as his lawyer pointed out Thursday, never says he actually shot Zimmerman.
During a talk with Hunt and Macero hours after the shooting, he told police Zimmerman had initiated a confrontation outside RJ’s, and implied he feared for his life because he had been told the Zimmermans had been looking for him.
“Javon jumped out (of) the car and started talking mad shit,” Silva told cops.
“I’m not trying to get off for anything,” Silva told them days later, adding that he just doesn’t want them “to hang me.”
While talking to police, Silva time and again discussed prior killings and other acts of violence he blamed on the Zimmerman organization, including the 2009 killing of Bernice McFadden and the 2010 killing of Rodney Baldwin in Derby.
No one has ever been arrested for those killings.
Silva offered a statement saying “everything about everything,” but not before talking with family.
He wondered how much time he could get. “Twenty-five?” he asks.
“There’s no set time limit but it’s going to be a lot less, and the charges are going to be different,” if it were a case of self-defense, Hunt told him.
“Ten? Fifteen?” Silva said.
“We don’t know,” Hunt said. “There’s a lot of things that be taken into account … It’s going to be a much different scenario than just a murder charge that you did for no reason.”
Though Silva said he would contact cops again to arrange making a statement, he did not, Hunt testified.
Two days after his last talk with cops, he was arrested on a probation violation charge which put him behind bars until he was formally charged with murdering Zimmerman.
While in custody at the state police Troop I barracks in Bethany, he was interviewed there by Detective Patrick Meehan, who testified after Hunt Thursday.
Meehan said Silva was “pretty cooperative” in an interview but wouldn’t talk specifically about the shooting.
‘The Law Of The Streets’
Meehan was followed on the witness stand by Derby Police Lt. Justin Stanko, who supervised the murder probe and summarized the case for the jury.
Stanko said that within moments of arriving at the bar about 20 minutes after the incident, he was told witnesses had implicated Silva.
Was that common, Stango, the prosecutor, asked?
No, Stanko said.
“People adhere to … the law of the streets,” Stanko said, for fear of retribution. “They don’t talk.”
Though Stanko got Howell to open up by shaming him over his T‑shirt, he said he had less luck Tyquan Bailey, another Zimmerman associate who testified Tuesday to being at the scene of the shooting, but recanted a statement he had given to police saying Silva pulled the trigger.
“Mr. Bailey may have invented the law of the streets,” Stanko said. “He was concerned with nothing more than his reputation with being labeled a snitch.”
Stanko testified that Bailey did give a statement implicating Silva, but warned them that unless they helped him out with the drug charges against him, he would play dumb at trial.
“I’ll go straight retarded on the stand if I don’t get my deal,” Stanko quoted Bailey, who is currently serving a 30-month prison term, as saying.
