Recently retired Shelton Police Chief Joel Hurliman said Monday he regrets leaving the force while the murder of a 15-year-old high school student remains unsolved.
But Hurliman also said that within the last few months authorities have received new information connected to the March 2014 shooting of Kristjan Ndoj, and that an arrest is inevitable.
His comments on the case are embedded below. Click play to listen.
“I don’t know whether it is going to be soon,” Hurliman said of an arrest. “But I would expect in less than a year, because there are a few things they still need to follow up on. The case hasn’t gone cold.”
Hurliman made the comments Monday morning during a wide-ranging interview on “Valley Navel Gazing,” a weekly talk show produced by the New Haven Independent and the Valley Independent Sentinel.
The retired chief did not elaborate on the new information connected to the young man’s death.
The complete interview, during which Hurliman reflects on 37 years of police work in Shelton, can be heard here.
Background
Kristjan, a Shelton High School student, was shot the evening of March 15, 2014 in the driveway of an Agawam Trail home. He was visiting a friend in the neighborhood at the time.
He died at Bridgeport Hospital five days later.
Kristjan was well liked by peers and staff at Shelton High, and more than 300 people attended his funeral Mass days after the killing, at which mourners told stories about what a good boy the teen was, stressing the senseless nature of what happened.
Police have never commented on what may have motivated the crime.
Kristjan’s relatives talked to the New Haven Register last spring.
In the weeks after the fatal shooting, sources told the Valley Indy that the initial investigation showed the young boy was hit in the head by a shotgun blast fired from a wooded area.
Part of the early investigation centered on a person who lived in the area of Agawam Trail.
In the 20 months since Kristjan’s death, state police — who took over the case at Hurliman’s request — have said they are following leads in the case, but have never discussed the investigation at length.
A $50,000 reward is still in the mix. Anyone with information should call state police at 1 – 800-842‑0200.
The Decision To Ask For Help
Hurliman asked state police to take over the homicide investigation within two weeks of the boy’s death.
Yet the chief, who retired last month, said he should have made the decision sooner.
“If I could have a do-over on that case, one thing I would have liked to have done would be (to) request that state police take it quite a bit sooner than I did,” Hurliman said.
The Shelton Police Department was hobbled by a number of factors in the earliest days of the investigation.
“At the time, we only had a few detectives,” Hurliman said. “We were borrowing some from different agencies, and we weren’t getting the same people day-to-day.”
Cases usually go smoother with the same day-to-day investigators.
“It’s a hell of a lot better for continuity,” Hurliman said.
At the time of the murder, several veteran detectives retired, or were in the process of retiring.
“People retiring does have an effect,” Hurliman said.
But even the veteran detectives didn’t have extensive experience with homicide investigations. The shooting was the city’s first homicide in 18 years.
The officers investigating the case were also hit with information that took them nowhere.
“Here’s the thing,” Hurliman said. “Cases are solved by information, but proved by forensics. So … we didn’t get a lot of information, and some of what we got was wrong.”
Facebook and Twitter buzzed with rumors in the first days after the shooting. Teens told parents what they were hearing. Parents passed along the info.
“That was some of it … That all has to be vetted. Somebody has to investigate, which takes a lot of work,” Hurliman said.
The investigative resources available from the state dwarfed the resources available in Shelton.
“When the state police came, the came like the First Calvary Division, with, I want to say, two dozen people, a couple of lieutenants, a couple of sergeants … they came out in force,” Hurliman said.
The retired chief said the decision to bring in state police wasn’t difficult, though it wasn’t a popular decision within the department.
“It’s a big step,” Hurliman said. “You’re admitting you had to call in another agency for big help.”
Trooper Kelly Grant, a state police spokesperson, said in an email Monday that she couldn’t say much about the case.
“It is an active investigation, so unfortunately there is no info to release at this time,” Grant said. “State police detectives are actively investigating pursuing all leads and evidence.”
The Valley Indy left a message Monday with Michael Boynton, a lawyer who has served as the Ndoj family’s spokesman.
