Crime & Safety

Victim in 2011 Abbotsford Ave. Shooting Sues West Hartford for Negligence

Wilfredo Texidor Jr., who was shot by former Conard student Devante Robinson on March 29, 2011, filed suit Thursday.

The Town of West Hartford was served with a lawsuit Thursday by the victim in the 2011 Abbotsford Avenue shooting, exactly two years to the date after the incident and just before the statute of limitations expired.

In the incident, Wilfredo Texidor Jr. was shot in the neck and critically injured by former Conard student, 18-year-old Devante Robinson.

The complaint alleges that the Town of West Hartford, and employees Carol Thibedeau, Brian Hill, and Courtney Grant, were negligent in varying degrees to calls made by Quintina Texidor on March 29, 2011.

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Corporation Counsel Joseph O'Brien said that the case will be referred to outside counsel and that it could take several years to resolve. "At the time this incident occurred we did review the situation and came to the conclusion that the case is very defensible ... We don't believe that the case has a whole lot of merit."

"It's tragic that Mr. Texidor was shot, but it was not something caused by the Town of West Hartford," O'Brien said.

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According to the complaint, Quintina Texidor first called police at 2:57 p.m. "to report a disturbance that was currently escalating at or in front of her residence."

That call was made to the police department's non-emergency number, not 911. Quintina Texidor told Thibedeau, the dispatcher who answered the call, that eight teenage boys were outside her home threatening her daughter, who at the time was a Conard High School student. Texidor, according to the complaint,  said the boys were "'looking to jump' her daughter and that they were threatening to 'air up' her house." According to the complaint, the group of teenage boys referred to themselves as the "NBA."

According to the complaint, the call was input into the department's NextGen system as a "non-emergency" by Thibedeau, and was also interpreted as a non-emergency by Officer Hill, who was responsible for sending officers on calls.

According to a . "NBA" was allegedly a reference to the New Britain Ave. gang. West Hartford Police have since implemented ongoing "gang awareness" training.

According to the complaint, attempts to dispatch officers in response to Quintina Texidor's original call were made, but one was leaving work for the day and another was involved in an active motor vehicle stop. The complaint alleges that no additional attempts to dispatch officers were made before Hill's shift ended at 3:30 p.m., and that neither Thibedeau nor Hall communicated "any information concerning this ongoing call to their replacements," instead relying on the department's computerized system.

The complaint alleges that Officer Grant, who replaced Hill, also initially failed to take further action to respond to Quintina Texidor's original call.

Quintina Texidor placed a second call to West Hartford Police at 3:55 p.m., which was answered by dispatcher Elizabeth Beyus, who is not named as a defendent in the suit. At that time, according to the complaint, Quintina Texidor complained that "a cruiser had not yet arrived and reiterated that the threats from the teenage boys know[n] as the 'NBA' gang had continued and escalated and that they were still threatening to her and her family and saying that they were going to shoot out her house."

The coding in the police department's NextGen system was changed by Beyus to "disturbance call" at 3:56 p.m., the complaint states, and two officers were dispatched by Officer Grant within minutes.

At 4:03 p.m., "before any West Hartford Police officers arrived on Abbotsford," Beyus received the first report of a shooting on Abbotsford Ave.

The victim was Wilfredo Texidor, a cousin of the girl allegedly being harrassed and the nephew of Quintina Texidor, who arrived at the house after the incident began. Wilfredo Texidor has suffered permanent injury as a result of the gun shot wound to his neck, the complaint alleges, and is making claim for economic and non-economic damages, past, present, and future.

Robinson pleaded guilty in Nov. 2011 to first-degree assault and possession of a pistol without a permit in the shooting incident and received a three-year prison sentence in Feb. 2012.


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