Ledyard police ID victim in Tuesday shooting
Ledyard — Police have identified the man who was hit by a bullet fired from another vehicle Tuesday night.
Jerrod Steele, 29, was driving a vehicle near the intersection of Shewville Road and Coachman Pike when the shooting occurred, police said. His passengers were India Robinson, 22, and Lauren Almond, 27.
On Wednesday, Robinson described the trio as cousins and said they had just pulled out of the driveway at 904 Shewville Road when shots rang out.
Steele, who was shot in the abdomen, continued driving to the Citgo on state Route 2 in Preston as one of his passengers called 911, police said. Emergency personnel met him at the gas station and took him to the hospital.
On Wednesday, police said his vital signs were stable. An update on his condition wasn’t immediately available.
In 2009, Steele was involved in three separate incidents for which he later served prison time, according to articles in The Day. In January that year, he shot up a dark-colored SUV near Elizabeth and Dunham streets in Norwich, causing damage but no injuries.
In June 2009, Steele drove four people to an apartment building in New London, where one of them shot Calvin Curtis-Thomas while attempting to rob him.
Just one month after that, Steele burglarized a home on the Mashantucket reservation. At the time, thousands of dollars’ worth of items, including multiple firearms, were reported as missing from the Elizabeth George Drive house.
In the three cases, Steele was convicted on the following charges, respectively: attempt to commit first-degree assault with a firearm, conspiracy to commit first-degree robbery and third-degree burglary. In the first two cases, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison suspended after five years with three years of probation. In the latter, he received a three-year prison sentence.
Records show Steele additionally was convicted of third-degree assault in 2016 for an incident that happened in February 2015. That conviction got him an additional year of prison time and triggered a violation of probation charge.
Police on Wednesday said they're working on several leads in the Tuesday night shooting. State police and Mashantucket Pequot Tribal police are assisting in the investigation.
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