Suit Filed: White Bridgeport Cop Standing on Drivers Side of Car Believed He Might Get Run Over So He Shot Black Teen Driver to Death

From [HERE] His “Little brother” shot dead by police, and the bullets wounds to his own chest and arm still healing, Julian Fyffe said he was still trying to make sense of what happened just over a week earlier.

“I would be happy to get justice for what happened,” Fyffe said Wednesday while recovering at home. “They (the police) chose to do it the wrong way.”

The 21-year-old Fyffe’s lawyer, Peter Finch, son of former Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch, said he is seeking $6 million in a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and its police department.

“The public perception right now is that the police stopped a danger to the community, when in fact the police created the danger,” Finch said.

City Attorney R. Christopher Meyer responded to the suit by saying, “This was a very tragic and sad event, and I’m surprised that anyone would file a lawsuit at this time before the final investigation detailing what happened is complete.”

State police and Bridgeport Police Chief Armando Perez have said Fyffe was wounded and 15-year-old Jayson Negron shot to death by police on May 9, after officers pursued the stolen vehicle in which they were riding.

But the two police agencies’ versions of what happened differ from each other — and from Fyffe’s.

State police have said that Negron, the driver of the stolen car, backed at police, and that an officer they wouldn’t identify fired, hitting Negron and Fyffe.

Perez said Negron put the car in reverse and backed at officer James Boulay, and that Boulay was about to be “sucked under the car” when he fired at Negron and Fyffe.

Wrong-way turn

Fyffe told Hearst Connecticut Media a completely different version of the events. He said he and Negron had been on their way to a studio recording session when they were followed by police, and that he had no knowledge of whether the vehicle the teen was driving had been stolen. In photo, racist suspects Bridgeport mayor and police chief. 

Fyffe said that while riding, he suggested they stop at a corner store to get some drinks and snacks.

“On our way, I thought I saw a cop behind us, but he didn’t have his lights or siren on,” Fyffe said. “I didn’t know if he was following us, but I told Jayson there was a cop behind us, and he told me he was going to drive into the Walgreens parking lot to see if he was following us.”

Fyffe said the parking lot was “busy” so Negron decided to exit onto Fairfield Avenue, but turned the wrong way onto the one-way street.

“We can see that cars are coming in our direction and I told him it was the wrong way,” Fyffe said. “He is looking nervous, and he puts the car into reverse gear, but doesn’t move, when these two cops on foot came running up to the car. One goes to the driver’s side window and the other goes to my window. The cops both had guns out and I thought they were ready to shoot us, so I put my hands up.”

Fyffe said one officer grabbed at Negron.

“As he is doing that, Jayson’s foot is on the gas and the car is reversing. The door is open and the car is going back, and the cop jumps out of the way. The car hits another car and that’s when the first shot went off. Jayson is yelling, ‘Ouch,’ and his body just went up on mine, like he got thrown on top of me.

“Then the second shot went off and hit me in the back of the arm, and my body jerked to the side, and that’s when the third shot went from my back through my chest.”

Fyffe said that while he was bleeding, “there was this cop at my window yelling, ‘Get out of the (expletive) car.’ I tried to keep my hands up, but I was feeling too weak. The cop opened the door and he grabbed me up and slammed me on the ground and handcuffed me. I could see Jayson from under the car, and he was handcuffed and still breathing.”

Musical bond

Fyffe said it was nearly 20 minutes before the emergency medical technicians were allowed by the police to treat him and Negron.

“They had me handcuffed and I couldn’t breathe,” he said.

Fyffe said when he later saw the photograph of Boulay in the newspaper, he recognized him as the officer who had shot them.

Finch said his client is not the hoodlum being portrayed by the police.

“My mother was one of his teachers at Bryant School, some of my friends coached him when he played for the Bridgeport Charges little league football team,” Finch said. “The officer overreacted, to put it lightly.”

Fyffe, a 2014 graduate of Bassick High School lives with his mother, Edris Lomax, in a first-floor apartment of a three-story multi-family house on Iranistan Avenue.

“I’m just trying to get him to heal,” Lomax lamented as her son struggled to pull a gray T-shirt over his head to cover the exposed bullet hole in his upper left chest. White gauze covered the wound on his upper left arm.

“It’s still sore,” Fyffe said, “Kind of like I worked out with weights too much.”

Although they were six years apart, Fyffe, a rapper, said he and Negron, who met through mutual friends, had a mutual interest in making music.

“I liked the way he made his music and he liked my music, and we would just get together to make some music,” he explained.

Often the two would get together to record a few “beats” at Just Right Studios on Wood Avenue. Usually each would get a ride to the studio, Fyffe said, but on the early evening of May 9, Negron pulled up in a sports utility vehicle.

“I was surprised he had a car, I thought maybe they (the owners of the studio) gave him the car for the day,” Fyffe said.

He continued he had never seen the car before and didn’t know if it was stolen. “I didn’t think to ask him.”