Crime & Safety
Cold Case: Man, 28, Sentenced In Smokin' Wings Robbery, Shooting
Tythrone Ford of New Haven gets 9 years in federal prison for his role in the 2015 restaurant robbery where an employee was shot, feds say.
NEW HAVEN, CT —A 28-year-old New Haven man will serve 9 years in federal prison for his role in the 2015 robbery of eatery Smokin' Wings, where an employee was shot, according to the Justice Department.
Held since his 2019 arrest, Tythrone Ford pleaded guilty to one count of attempted interference with commerce by robbery last September, U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut Leonard C. Boyle announced. Ford was sentenced in U.S. District Court Tuesday. Following the 110 months he must serve in prison, Ford will have three years of supervised release.
According to court documents and statements made in court, at around 11 p.m. on April 11, 2015, Ford, Treizy Lopez and another man entered Smokin' Wings on Congress Avenue and demanded money at gunpoint, federal prosecutor Boyle said.
Find out what's happening in New Havenwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Lopez shot a female employee in the stomach, Boyle said. Ford, Lopez and an "associate" then fled the restaurant, federal prosecutors said. New Haven police officers found a .22 caliber revolver in a nearby trash can, records show.
Around eight hours before the Smokin' Wings robbery, prosecutors said, Ford, Lopez, and another man drove together to Bridgeport and, Lopez and the other man "armed with handguns, entered Sapiaos Market in Bridgeport, and demanded money. During that attempted robbery, market owner Jose Salgado was shot and killed, Boyle said, as Ford waited in a car outside.
Find out what's happening in New Havenwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
"After the murder," prosecutors said, the three men drove back to New Haven together and hours later, Ford and Lopez "participated in the gunpoint robbery at Smokin' Wings."
Forensic analysis of the gun found by cops in the trash can, and "projectiles" collected from the scene of both attempted robberies, showed the gun was used in both shootings, federal prosecutors said, adding that DNA collected from the gun revealed that both Lopez and Ford possessed the gun.
Lopez also pleaded guilty to one count of attempted interference with commerce by robbery and awaits sentencing.
This was a "cold case" investigation by the ATF and the New Haven Police Department, with the help of the Connecticut Forensic Science Laboratory.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jocelyn C. Kaoutzanis and Nathaniel J. Gentile through the Justice's Department's Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) program and Project Longevity, the Justice Department's violent crime reduction effort.