21-Year-Old New Haven Promise Scholar, SCSU Senior Mourned

NEW HAVEN, CT — Killed in a wrong-way crash on Interstate 91 early Saturday morning, Chardé Monet Spates, 21, of New Haven, is being remembered as a diligent student with a bright future ahead of her.

Spates was driving a Toyota Camry the wrong-way southbound in the left lane in the northbound lanes of I-91 in Meriden at around 2:30 a.m., state police said, when her vehicle collided with one being driven by Judith Melvin-levy, 50, of Windsor. Both women were pronounced dead at the scene of the crash.

Spates, a senior at Southern Connecticut State University, was just a “few credits shy of earning her degree in public health,” according to the school.

She was a part of the university’s first cohort of the Residential New Haven Promise Emerging Leaders Program in 2018. A summer internship was planned and then in August, she’d have graduated.

As SCSU describes, the New Haven Promise program is part of the University’s “commitment to the students from the Elm City.”

It provides scholarships covering housing expenses for up to 10 incoming New Haven Promise Scholars each year. Paired with professional mentors, they are “provided a structured pathway to becoming campus leaders and, ultimately, campus ambassadors who go back to their high schools and communities to share their knowledge about the student experience at Southern.”

On its Facebook page, her mentor, Dawn Stanton, director of University Access Programs, described Spate as “so warm and kind and full of ambition. She was a hard worker who learned to balance multiple responsibilities and took great pride in everything she committed to achieving.”

Called “beautiful inside and out with a smile that lit up the office every time she walked in,” Stanton was quoted as saying she’ll miss “... knowing all the ways she would have changed the world. The loss of Chardé is heartbreaking.”

Spate’s advisor Stanley Bernard, associate professor and internship coordinator in the Department of Public Health, and Deb Risisky, public health professor and undergraduate coordinator and one of Spates’ professors said the young woman was “was a diligent student working several jobs while still keeping a good GPA."

"She was bright and had a great future ahead of her. She worked hard for what she wanted. She enjoyed engaging in her class discussions and always had thoughtful contributions.”

The university shared that it has counseling services to help support students in the wake of Spates’ death.

“On her senior application, her school counselor at Metropolitan Business Academy, Heidi Pitkin, had written, ‘Charde has a smile that lights up any room she enters, and her presence and soft-spoken manner are both calming and positive."’

Yale University recently "extended its commitment to New Haven Promise, through June 2026.

Established in 2010, New Haven Promise provides up to full-tuition scholarships for local public school students attending two- and four-year public colleges and universities in Connecticut, and up to $2,500 towards city students’ tuition at private universities in Connecticut.