Four people were arrested in Farmington between Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning, charged collectively with twenty-one counts spanning firearms, identity theft, driving under the influence, and disorderly conduct. The shooting case that ran on every wire in the state Tuesday night has its official document.
The 19-year-old initially named in wire reports as Jordan Cruz is, per the Farmington Police Department's arrest log released Wednesday morning, Jordan Xavier Burns Cruz — a compound surname the wire copy elided. He was arrested at 1:09 p.m. Tuesday at 1 Forest Park Drive by Officer Kyler A. Fausel. Incident number 2600007039. Held on bond.
The bond — $300,000, surety — sits on a single charge: negligent storage of a firearm, Connecticut General Statutes § 53a-217a. The other six counts on his record (illegal possession of a weapon in a motor vehicle, risk of injury to a child, first-degree reckless endangerment, carrying a pistol without a permit, illegal possession of a firearm with no serial number, and illegal possession of a large-capacity magazine) all show $0 bond on the log. The storage charge is the count gating his release.
Six of those seven charges are the first appearance of the underlying statute on this beat. The seventh — risk of injury to a child, § 53-21 — has now appeared four times in three weeks under entirely unrelated circumstances. That is enough of a pattern to be worth flagging. It is not, however, a single fact pattern.
Burns Cruz was not the only Tuesday arrest.
At 10:43 a.m., Officer Jeffrey A. Glaude served a habeas warrant at Geographical Area 18 in Hartford on Jaiden Tyreik Bethea, 20, of New Britain. Eight charge entries — larceny sixth, illegal use of a revoked payment card, identity theft third, and a series of conspiracy counts paired with each — all on Incident #2600003909. That incident number is not new. It is the same shared incident that connected Sincere Hector Tirado and Honesty Love Tirado in mid-April. Bethea is the third co-defendant. Same incident, three home addresses, no documented relation between any of them. He was arraigned the same day.
At 5:09 p.m., Officer Michael J. Smith arrested Chazarae Lee Collins, 32, of Hartford, on Scott Swamp Road on five charges: violation of a protective order, driving under the influence, operating under suspension, failure to drive in proper lane, and operating a motor vehicle without minimum insurance. Held on bond. Smith now has six log appearances — more than any other officer on this beat — and two of those six are DUI arrests on Scott Swamp Road. The first was the nine-charge traffic stop on Joseph in late March. Same road, different mile marker, same officer.
At 6:06 p.m., Officer Nicholas G. Karangekis arrested Brian Noel Gonzalez, 32, of New Britain, on a single count of disorderly conduct at 319 New Britain Avenue. Five-thousand-dollar nonsurety bond. Posted bond and released. It is the first disorderly-conduct arrest at 319 New Britain Avenue in this series — the address has otherwise been a warrant-service location for larceny, burglary, identity theft, and harassment. It is also the second Gonzalez arrest by Karangekis in four weeks. The first was Alberto Gonzalez Jr on April 1. Different first name, different address, different DOB, different charge profile. Same surname. Coincidence, not connection.
All four court dates fall on Wednesday — except Bethea's, which was same-day Tuesday. None of those outcomes were available at the time of this filing.
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— Jack Beckett has covered Farmington's police beat long enough to know that compound surnames, shared incident numbers, and Scott Swamp Road DUIs are part of the standing repertoire. He is on his second cup of coffee. The official log was released at 7:55 a.m. ☕
The Farmington Mercury covers the town nobody else is covering — the police log that is technically public record but that you'd never find unless someone typed it up, the planning meeting that ran past nine, the school budget vote that determines what your kids learn next year. We publish slowly, deliberately, and without apology. Always last to breaking news. Thorough about everything else. farmingtonmercury.com | #LastToFirst 📰