In the early hours of a Monday in August 2018, the relative calm of a Bridgeport, Connecticut summer day was shattered by gunfire. Shortly after 1:30 a.m. on August 13th, a 25-year-old Black / African American male named Len Allen Smith was shot and killed. He was sitting in the front passenger seat of a car parked outside the Sunshine Deli on Union Avenue at the intersection of Stratford Avenue.
The attack was a drive-by shooting, with the shots fired from a white Jeep Cherokee that pulled alongside the vehicle Smith was in.
Smith, a resident of Fourth Street in Bridgeport, was struck in the head and pronounced dead at Bridgeport Hospital. A 33-year-old woman, identified as his girlfriend Georgia Comacho, was in the back seat and was also shot in the head. She was rushed to the same hospital and underwent surgery, leaving her in critical condition. A police officer who happened to be in his cruiser in front of the deli writing a report for an unrelated incident witnessed the shooting. He immediately called it in and provided a description of the fleeing vehicle. A few hours later, a white Jeep Cherokee matching the description was found abandoned and burned at Indian Well State Park in Shelton. The vehicle had been reported stolen from Newburgh, New York, a few days prior.
In the wake of the shooting, friends and family remembered Len Allen Smith as a wonderful guy who loved basketball, music, and video games. They said he had no known enemies and worked in the produce department at a local Stop and Shop. The authorities initially stated that Smith and the woman with him may not have been the intended targets. This suspicion was later confirmed as the investigation progressed, pointing to a tragic case of mistaken identity. The Sunshine Deli was known to be a hangout for members of an East Side gang, which had ongoing conflicts with other local gangs.
The investigation eventually led to arrests in July 2020. Federal authorities charged five individuals in connection with the murder and other violent crimes. The suspects, Henry "Mills" Floy, Shakale "Charlie Wilson" Brantley, Antoine Sistrunk, Ta'Ron "250" Pharr, and Jaylen "Jay-Dot" Wilson, were identified as alleged members of the Original North End gang. The charges against them included accessory after the fact to murder in aid of racketeering. It was alleged that after the murder, they attempted to destroy the stolen Jeep and other evidence to obstruct the investigation. Subsequently, Ta'Ron Pharr pleaded guilty to a federal racketeering charge in connection with the killing.
