In the early morning hours of February 19, 2019, the quiet of a Hartford, Connecticut apartment complex was broken by a grim discovery. A resident heading to work around 1:30 a.m. stumbled upon the unresponsive body of a man in the parking lot of the Woodland Drive complex and immediately called 911. The man was identified as 26-year-old Joseph Goiangos III, a White/Caucasian male from the nearby city of Middletown.
Emergency responders arrived at the scene but it was too late; Goiangos was pronounced dead.
Initially, the cause of death was not immediately clear to investigators. They found a puncture wound on Goiangos's chest, but the city's ShotSpotter system, a network of acoustic sensors designed to detect and locate gunfire, had not registered any shots in the area. This led to initial speculation that the wound might not have been from a firearm. However, the mystery was clarified by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, whose autopsy confirmed that Joseph Goiangos III had died from a small-caliber gunshot wound to the chest. His death was officially ruled a homicide, the third in the city that year.
The investigation that followed sought to piece together the final hours of Goiangos's life. Police were puzzled as to why he was at the Hartford apartment complex, a place with no history of serious crime. His car was discovered in a different part of the city, in the south end, adding another layer to the perplexing circumstances of his death. Detectives began interviewing his friends and family to understand what might have brought him to that specific location on that fateful night. It was also noted that at the time of his death, Goiangos had two pending court cases in Middletown related to firearms.
For months, the case remained under investigation. Then, on July 12, 2019, Hartford police announced a significant breakthrough. They had identified a suspect, and with the assistance of the U.S. Marshals Violent Fugitive Task Force, they apprehended 27-year-old Tamair Chance. Chance was taken into custody and charged with murder and criminal possession of a firearm in connection with the death of Joseph Goiangos III. He was held on a $1.5 million bond, bringing a measure of resolution to a case that had begun with a mysterious death in the early morning darkness.
