~~~<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leafy, prosperous Redding, Connecticut, which sits near the middle of Fairfield County, was originally named \u201cReading,\u201d not because of an especially literate population but because of one lawyer named John Read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read would help define the town\u2019s boundaries in 1767, but soon after the town was named after him, a decision was made to change the spelling to plain, easy-to-pronounce Redding, obscuring reference to John Read \u2013 and literacy. Citizens were left with a name that strongly suggests the color red.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It hardly seems fair to Mr. Read. But there are far worse examples of injustice in Redding involving the color of blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A recent one concerns the death of a lawyer named Gugsa Abraham (Abe) Dabela, found dead in his crashed Mercedes SUV<\/a> near his home in Redding at 2:11 a.m. on April 5, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dabela had moved from New York City to Redding in 2011, renting a garage apartmen<\/a>t<\/a> owned by Peter Swan at 8 Indian Hill Road<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the website named for him (justice4abe.com), Dabela is described as \u201cgregarious\u201d and \u201coutspoken.\u201d He was also witty and diligent. With a master\u2019s degree in public health and a law degree under his belt by 2012, Dabela passed bar exams in New York and Connecticut. He was preparing applications for admission to the Maryland and D.C. bars,<\/a> and had every reason to be gregarious and outspoken and witty and confident. But he would practice law for only a year before falling victim to a killer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three stops and a text message.<\/strong> Shortly before his death, 35-year-old Dabela visited two local restaurants within minutes of his home: the Little Pub<\/a> in Ridgefield and the Black Cat Grille in Redding<\/a>,<\/a> both solid establishments with loyal clientele. It was later revealed (by friends of Dabela) that he also visited another pub, The Lumberyard Pub and Sports Bar<\/a> at 2 Main Street in Redding (now permanently closed), although the police mysteriously omitted this information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At about 12:03 a.m., Dabela received a text message, which read: \u201cturn he just didn\u2019t.\u201d The Yoda-like syntax was mysterious enough. Adding to the mystery, according to the case file and a report based on it by Crime Watch<\/a>, the sender\u2019s cell phone information was deleted after <\/em>Dabela\u2019s death, while the phone was in police custody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The crash at Umpawaug and Mallory.<\/strong> While driving back to his home, Dabela swerved for unknown reasons, turning his SUV on its roof. He was pronounced dead less than a mile away from his home, not as the direct result of the crash, but from a gunshot wound to the back<\/em> of his head<\/a>.1<\/sup> Whether the bullet was fired before or after the crash has never been determined, but the driver\u2019s side window was completely shattered<\/a>, and at the time he was shot, Dabela\u2019s head was positioned near that window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The crash site itself \u2013 on the corner of Umpawaug Road and Mallory Lane<\/a> \u2013 merits close attention. Dabela was traveling north on Umpawaug toward his home on Indian Hill Road. (See map below.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As speculated by researcher Anne Berg, the site would provide a perfect location for a staged accident, with the perpetrator blocking off Umpawaug and secreting his vehicle on Mallory, then just lying in wait to shoot through Dabela\u2019s car window either before or after the crash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps Dabela just didn\u2019t turn in time to avoid the blockade, as presaged by the text message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A case of police negligence.<\/strong> According to official sources<\/a> :<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was also revealed by police that an anonymous 911 caller reported a rollover crash<\/a> at about 1:36 a.m. without stopping to help Dabela.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But police negligence at the crime scene was the real shocker. It was so blatant, in fact, that Dabela\u2019s family filed a lawsuit in April 2016<\/strong>, suing the town of Redding and various members of the Redding police department on 10 counts of civil rights violations. You can find the PDF of the case filing here.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Among the defendants were Douglas Fuchs, Redding\u2019s chief of police; and seven of Redding\u2019s police officers (Ryan Alcott, Mark DeLuca, Peter Quinn, Timothy Succi, Brandon Kaufman, Brittany Salafia and Michael Livingston).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The suit hinged on the family\u2019s belief that Dabela\u2019s case was mishandled and the murder covered up because of racism (Dabela was African-American), an opinion shared by the Connecticut NAACP, which assisted in the family\u2019s investigation<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other possible motives, while touched on, have not (in this writer\u2019s opinion) been sufficiently explored, such as the fact that Dabela made no secret of his political views, which favored the second amendment and private property rights; and other opinions, which we shall explore later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The case file includes a full account of what happened according to the plaintiffs. Here are some of the most glaring anomalies it reveals:<\/p>\n\n\n\n More injustice.<\/strong> In June 2017<\/strong>, Danbury state\u2019s attorney Stephen J. Sedensky, III ruled unequivocally that no homicide had occurred<\/a>. Sedensky had already achieved notoriety as the overseer of the official report on the Sandy Hook incident, a document loaded with inconsistencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sedensky\u2019s ruling on Dabela\u2019s death did not silence Dabela\u2019s family who, in late 2018, were still seeking DNA samples from three firefighters<\/a> who were later determined to have been at the crime scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According the Dabelas\u2019 attorneys, \u201c[Abe] Dabela had been intimidated by Redding firefighters at a local bar a few weeks before his death.\u201d Note that. It will become important below and in Part 2 of this series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rights infringed.<\/strong> Dabela had been the owner of two firearms that he was licensed to carry, but that distinction was not easily won. In Connecticut, obtaining a gun permit means taking an NRA-approved course, obtaining references, visiting a local police department to be fingerprinted, submitting to an FBI check, visiting the state police to obtain the permit, and paying generously at each stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the Dabela vs. Redding<\/em> lawsuit, we learn that Dabela was an outspoken gun rights advocate. In January 2013, he appeared at Redding\u2019s police department with the requisite documents to obtain permits to carry concealed pistols. Despite meeting all of the requirements, Dabela\u2019s application was delayed. The Chief of Police, Douglas Fuchs, told him that his references would have to be interviewed individually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pistol permits normally take eight weeks to process in Connecticut. So when Dabela\u2019s permit was still in limbo by April 2013, he complained in writing to Reuben Bradford, who was then the commissioner of Connecticut Dept. of Emergency Services and Public Protection. Bradford lit a fire under Fuchs, who approved the permit shortly afterward.2<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n Up until his death, Dabela advocated for complainants with gun permit issues. From the case file: \u201cMr. Dabela had notable victories in Milford, Connecticut four months prior to his murder, and Stamford, Connecticut two weeks prior to his murder.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dabela\u2019s other activities included motorcycle riding, frequenting local town hall meetings and conversing with locals about tax grievance issues. This was a person who talked \u2013 a lot \u2013 about political hot topics in public places and who helped people whose basic rights were being undermined. There\u2019s nothing wrong with that. The question is whether it got him killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It may have been premonitory that Dabela began regularly carrying a gun<\/a> during the last two months of his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An altercation.<\/strong> According to the case file, Dabela had a \u201cheated argument\u201d with a town finance official about property taxes two days before his death. To date, the police have not released the identity of this person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which town was this person from? Stamford? Milford? Redding? Newtown? Was this person ever investigated? Disagreements in bars between men usually erupt over women, money or sports. Perhaps a property tax squabble didn\u2019t seem like an incident worth pursuing to the police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A connection to Sandy Hook.<\/strong> Redding police chief Douglas Fuchs, a principal defendant in Dabela vs. Redding<\/em>, was a Newtown resident who sent his children to Sandy Hook school<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After hearing a police evacuation exercise at the school on his cruiser radio, Fuchs says he responded to the shooting himself. He was interviewed by his alma mater<\/a>, Brandeis University, about the role he played at Sandy Hook. According to the excerpt below, Fuchs was among the movers and shakers after the incident:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOver the next 10 days, as Newtown\u2019s police department recovered from the trauma, Fuchs, whose own children had attended Sandy Hook, managed a massive law-enforcement operation in support of the Newtown police and community. He supervised nearly 1,000 police officers from across the state who provided security for the schools and the victims\u2019 families; escorted families to and from funerals; and handled the media, gifts and onlookers descending on Newtown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the shooting, Fuchs says in the same article that he worked to reform gun laws, specifically to limit magazine capacity to 10 rounds. He is quoted as saying that \u201climiting magazines changes the game in a mass shooting. It\u2019s something we can do that will save lives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Obviously, such reforms would have done nothing to save Dabela\u2019s life. And it\u2019s doubtful that Dabela would have agreed with Fuchs\u2019s position if the two men had, say, walked into a bar and conversed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Officer Death. <\/strong>Fuchs ran into more legal trouble over a suicide case in April 2016<\/a>, when he allegedly prevented paramedics from helping a Redding man in extremis,<\/em> claiming the shed where he tried to hang himself was \u201ca crime scene.\u201d The man, Peter Valenti, showed faint signs of life later, but died in the hospital. While an investigation was conducted over a lawsuit filed by Valenti\u2019s family, Fuchs was put on administrative leave. Touchy-feely stories about Fuchs training guide dogs<\/a> began to appear around that time. But Fuchs remained on leave until his early retirement in June 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A phone conversation with Wolfgang Halbig.<\/strong> About three weeks before his death, Abe Dabela contacted Wolfgang Halbig, using a burner phone.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Following is Mr.Halbig\u2019s account of the exchange (bracketed information is mine):<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe asked me if I could buy one [a burner phone] since he does not trust anyone in town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe wanted to know my thoughts on Sandy Hook. He read my 16 questions and he had concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe spoke and it appeared that I might be able to ask him to represent me with my CT FOIA requests, and never heard back from him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Halbig\u2019s 16 questions3<\/sup> were provocative enough for Dabela to make contact around the same time that he was alleged to have had an unpleasant encounter with three Redding firefighters. Coincidence? If so, why did Dabela feel compelled to use a burner phone?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Readers should mentally bookmark questions #10-12 on Mr. Halbig\u2019s list (see below). These questions will become important in Part 2 of this series. But the entire set of questions is relevant and, in my opinion, should be regarded as evidence in the shooting death of Abe Dabela.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shoeless in Redding.<\/strong> The novelist, satirist and social critic Mark Twain built his final home in Redding, CT and called it Stormfield. (You can see how closely situated it is to Abe Dabela\u2019s final home and the crash site in the maps above.) Twain would live in Stormfield for a brief two years before his death in 1910, about the same amount of time that Dabela had in his modest garage apartment on Indian Hill Road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two witty but very different men from different times, and perhaps they would not have seen eye to eye on much. But I think Twain and Dabela would likely have agreed on the following quote by the former:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The truth, in this case, is still trying to find its socks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ~~~<\/p>\n\n\n\n H\/T: Anne Berg, Alison Maynard, Wolfgang Halbig and Tony Mead<\/p>\n\n\n\n The author is indebted to all of the above-named, but particularly to Anne Berg, whose astute observations and research led her to suggest a potential connection to Sandy Hook in the tragic death of Atty. Dabela long before anyone else was willing to consider it. You can find her expository article here<\/a>.<\/strong> ~~~<\/p>\n\n\n\n Footnotes:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 1<\/sup> It isn\u2019t clear who declared Dabela dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2<\/sup> It\u2019s interesting to note that a letter from Bradford<\/a> accompanied files released by the CT State Police in December 2013 on the Sandy Hook incident. Bradford said in the letter that the Sandy Hook investigation was closed. He would retire in the same week, after three years as \u201cthe first African American to lead the state\u2019s largest police organization<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3<\/sup> Wolfgang Halbig\u2019s 16 Unanswered Questions That Demand Truth on Sandy Hook<\/em> first appeared on SandyHookJustice.com. They follow:<\/p>\n\n\n\n (orig. pub. Feb. 2, 2019) Nearly five years have passed since the murder of Attorney Abe Dabela. But some previously unpublished information may remove […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,38],"tags":[158,156,157,59],"class_list":["post-733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-official-corruption","category-sandy-hook","tag-douglas-fuchs","tag-gugsa-abraham-dabela","tag-redding-police","tag-sandy-hook"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/therealcolorado.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/image-1-909x1024.png\")
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Now read Part II of this article, which is here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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