Fairfield Beach Rd. remains untainted after the shooting. (Peter Caty/The Mirror)
Sergeant James Perez of The Fairfield Police Department, told The Mirror that the entire police department was very thankful to the students and residents that came forward and helped in this weeks investigation of a shooting on Fairfield Beach Rd. “Nobody had to say anything- the level of service that a community receives from its police service is directly related to the cooperation of its citizens. Thanks to the excellent witness cooperation we were able to close this entire case in 16 hours.”
Sergeant Perez gave this account to The Mirror:
Just before 1 a.m. on April 14th police responded to a call about gunshots on Fairfield Beach Rd. When police arrived at the scene, witnesses told the officers that a black male driving a silver Mazda with New Jersey license plates was responsible for shooting a handgun. The car then drove west on Fairfield Beach Rd. towards the dead end.
The incident allegedly started when a car pulled up to a group of students walking down the road. The driver lowered his window and allegedly said, “Who wants to get serious?” He repeated himself several times and after getting no response, pulled out a handgun and shot five rounds into the air.
Police immediately blocked off the road and inspected every vehicle traveling east. During this inspection they recorded all the information about the cars and everyone in them.
Mug shot of Alex Ortiz (Contributed photo by Fairfield Police Department)
The man responsible for the gunshots was one of the people stopped. He was briefly detained but no weapon was found in the car and neither the car nor person matched the description police had. The man then tried to get back through the roadblock, supposedly to get the gun he had hidden, but police would not let him.
Police used infrared machines up and down the road to try to find the suspect in case he was hiding, but to no avail. They did find five shell casings around the 1200 block of Fairfield Beach Rd.
On Wednesday morning people started coming in with better information and the police realized they had been looking for the wrong man the night before. Every witness’ story started and ended with the car. When the witness’ were shown pictures of the cars the police had stopped during the roadblock, almost all of them identified the car as a silver Mitsubishi Lancer with Connecticut license plates as opposed to a silver Mazda with New Jersey plates which the officers were originally looking for. The car also had tinted windows, a detail that was not in the initial report.
The car belonged to Alex Ortiz, a resident of Bridgeport. Ortiz is a light skinned Hispanic male with facial hair- another inconstancy with the original report.
The police were able to get in contact with the suspects mother and on Friday, April 16, and Ortiz then turned himself in at the Fairfield Police Station. He was very cooperative and took the officers down to where he had stashed the gun- behind a garage on Fairfield Beach Rd. The gun was licensed and registered in his name.
Ortiz was charged with threatening in the first degree, reckless endangerment in the first degree and illegal discharge of a weapon. He bail is set at $5,000 and his court date is on April 26.
The students involved were contacted by The Mirror, but wished to stay silent on the matter.
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