In the late hours of a Thursday in Wethersfield, Connecticut, the life of 16-year-old Vincent Basile was tragically cut short. On November 2, 2017, the male teenager was fatally shot at a friend's home on Alison Lane. Responding to a 911 call around 8:17 p.m., police discovered Vincent deceased from a gunshot wound. The caller reported that his friend had been shot and that the person responsible had fled the scene in a vehicle.
Within an hour of the initial call, Wethersfield police
located the suspect's vehicle on Ridge Road and took 18-year-old Noah Hendron into custody. Hendron, a recent graduate of Wethersfield High School where Vincent was a junior, was subsequently charged with murder and criminal use of a firearm. The investigation revealed that before the 911 call was made, a report of a gunshot in the area had been received by police around 6:34 p.m., but officers were unable to find the source of the sound at that time. It wasn't until nearly two hours after the shooting that the crime was reported.
During the investigation, it was discovered that Hendron had tried to conceal his involvement by throwing the. 38-caliber revolver he had used into a storm drain. At his trial, prosecutors argued that Hendron had intentionally killed Vincent, stating that he had repeatedly loaded and unloaded the gun and pointed it at his friend's face despite being asked to stop. Hendron’s defense, however, contended that the shooting was a tragic accident, a result of negligence and recklessness, but not murder. They pointed to a witness who had told a 911 dispatcher and investigators that the shooting was accidental.
In November 2019, a jury found Noah Hendron not guilty of murder but convicted him of the lesser charge of first-degree manslaughter with a firearm. In January 2020, Hendron, then 20, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the death of his friend. At his sentencing, he expressed remorse, calling his actions "stupid and juvenile." The case concluded a painful chapter for the community and the family of Vincent Basile, who was remembered as a brilliant, out-of-the-box thinker who was loved by all who knew him.
