
An image from the inspector general's report.
ANSONIA – A fatal shooting involving Bridgeport police and an unarmed suspect who crashed in Ansonia was questionable – but there’s not enough evidence to file criminal charges against the officers.
“The investigation has determined that the police tactics in several respects were flawed, and the justifiability of the shooting is questionable, but there is insufficient evidence to support a criminal prosecution.”
That is according to a report released Monday (Feb. 3) by Robert J. Devlin, Jr., the Connecticut Inspector General.
The report details how officers from Bridgeport ended up shooting and killing 41-year-old Jonathan Mark Lewis Bell after he fled from them and crashed into a house on Division Street on the Ansonia-Derby border Feb. 4, 2024.
The video above is an approximate 15-minute police video edited to just under four minutes that shows the chase and shooting.
Officers with the Bridgeport Police Department’s Tactical Narcotics Team (TNT) received information from an informant saying Bell – identified by the informant as “JB” – was a drug dealer who always carried a gun. “JB” was meeting up with the informant at 4:15 p.m., the informant told the cops.
Police planned to pull Bell’s car over. The informant told police Bell was armed, with a gun in his waistband. The informant told the officers he had seen the weapon.
Police tried to pull Bell over in Bridgeport, Bell took off, according to the report, eventually hopping onto Route 8 north, passing through five towns before crashing into the front porch of a house in Ansonia near the Division Street off ramp. Bridgeport Police Officer Matthew Hoffman’s vehicle collided with Bell’s vehicle, a Mercedes SUV, striking the driver’s side door.
Hoffman got out of his vehicle.
“Let me see your hands,” Hoffman said to Bell.
Bell put his vehicle in reverse and tried to drive away. He was further blocked in by a second police car. Bell’s tires spun. He was trapped.
Hoffman said he heard an officer say “he (Bell) has a gun.”
Cops said they saw Bell “frantically” searching for something in the vehicle and reaching for his waist. Meanwhile, a woman passenger in the vehicle made eye contact with police and held her arms in the air.
“The operator continued to shuffle his hands downward while looking at his waist area,” Hoffman told investigators. “Officer Hoffman continued to shout, ‘show me your hands, do not reach,’ ” according to the report. “The operator continued to move his hands around within the front seat of the vehicle disregarding all verbal commands as I began to fear he was attempting to utilize the firearm on his person.”
An officer broke a hole in one of the vehicle’s windows. Bell punched out the damaged glass and gave police the finger, according to the report. Officer Hoffman yelled “he is reaching” to the other officers on scene, according to the report. At the same time police were removing the woman from the vehicle.
One of those officers fell. Hoffman thought Bell had brandished his weapon. Hoffman fired a shot.
“Simultaneously, I heard multiple officers shouting “he’s reaching” on the adjacent side of the vehicle. Fearing that the suspect was about to shoot given his sudden and explosive movements toward the rear/right side of the vehicle as well as the placement of his hands near his waist area followed by a full extension of his right arm, I fired one round toward the suspect to stop him from using deadly force,” the report quotes Hoffman as saying.
Several of the other officers fired at Bell, too. One officer, Sgt. Christopher Robinson, said he had broken a hole in Bell’s window and then thought that Bell had shot at him. Officer Luis J. Ortiz also told investigators he thought Bell was firing at them.
The subsequent investigation showed Bell did not have a gun on his person. Three pellet guns resembling real weapons were in the SUV’s storage compartment above the spare tire; not accessible to Bell at the time of the shooting, the report notes. Police also found two knives in the SUV, but those weapons were not within Bell’s reach.
Bell was shot four times – in his head, chest, and back.
The woman in the vehicle was Bell’s girlfriend, according to the report. She told authorities they had been smoking crack in the vehicle earlier in the day – and that Bell had taken a hit just before police tried to pull them over in Bridgeport. An autopsy showed that Bell had cocaine, fentanyl and morphine in his system.
The girlfriend said Bell fled because he said he had guns and drugs in the vehicle and didn’t want to go back to jail. Cops later found four “smoking pipes” in and around the wrecked SUV.
“At one point, Bell’s girlfriend questioned whether the police were allowed to chase them in the way that they were. Jonathan said that the police were supposed to let up on them and let them go,” according to the inspector general’s report. She said Bell was only making it worse.
After they crashed in Ansonia, the woman told authorities that Bell said “Let them shoot us. I love you. We can go out in a bang.”
A friend of Bell’s told investigators Bell was a U.S. Marine who fought in Iraq and that his “mind was all over the place” by what he experienced there. He had developed a drug habit and sold drugs to support the habit, the friend said, according to the report.
The investigation by the inspector general determined that Officer Hoffman, thinking Bell was reaching for a gun, fired a shot at Bell. One of two shots he fired, according to the report.
Officer Wilberto Rivera-Colon, thinking the shot Hoffman fired came from Bell, shot at Bell.
The sergeant, thinking police were under fire, also fired his weapon at the SUV.
There was no gun “on or near” Bell, the report concludes, citing crime scene evidence and interviews.
‘Analysis’
The report finds that the pursuit of Bell from Bridgeport to Ansonia was against the Bridgeport Police Department’s pursuit policy.
Bell’s suspected offense – carrying a weapon and buying drugs – were not crimes of violence presenting a grave and immediate danger to the public. The report notes Bell’s vehicle reached 100 mph during the chase – but the officers did not report the speed to dispatch, a violation of department policy.
The pursuit should have been stopped, according to the inspector general.
The report also points out that Officer Ortiz did not activate his body worn camera as required by state law. Officer Hoffman delayed the activation of his camera until he got out of his vehicle, which resulted in 30 seconds of no audio, during which he fired his weapon.
The report further states that Bridgeport police had the chance to “de-escalate” the situation once they had Bell pinned between their vehicles and the porch he crashed into. Instead, they “swarmed the SUV.”
Police were assuming Bell was armed when he wasn’t.
“Given the information that Bell was armed, this approach amounted to officer-created jeopardy. There was no margin for error,” according to the report. “All of Bell’s movements inside the SUV were seen through the prism of his being armed and dangerous. This greatly increased the risk that any movement by Bell would be immediately construed (or misconstrued) as a grab for a gun.”
The report states that Officer Hoffman was “probably” too quick to fire his weapon.
“The police, however, needed more than Bell’s quick movement to justify shooting him. He was unarmed and their belief that he was reaching for a gun was premature and arguably not objectively reasonable. For these reasons, some people would see the shooting as not justified. I have vacillated on this question myself,” Inspector General Devlin writes.
But the report also points out that Bell may have been essentially baiting police into shooting him by giving the impression he was reaching for a weapon.
“In other words, Bell’s sudden abrupt movement to his right need not have been an actual effort to grab a gun,” the inspector general writes. “The test is not what Bell intended but what his act caused Officer Hoffman to reasonably believe. Applying this test and mindful of the burden of proof, my view is that there is insufficient evidence to support a prosecution in this matter.”
Devlin concludes the evidence does not meet the legal standard to prove an unjustified shooting, but says the officers should have disciplinary action.
“There should, however, be consequences to the litany of substandard police work documented in this report. In this regard, I have confidence that the command staff of the Bridgeport Police Department and its Internal Affairs Division will take appropriate action,” he wrote.