CT teen charged in death of man during roadside incident. The victim had just brought son to work.
Justin Sloan Sr. had just dropped his son off at work in Middletown when he was fatally stabbed in a roadside incident in Meriden on Saturday that led to an hours-long stand-off between police and a 19-year-old suspect, according to the 46-page incident report obtained by the Hartford Courant.
Sloan, 44, was found lying on the ground near the 800 block of Hanover Road “bleeding profusely” from stab wounds to his neck and chest while his girlfriend’s Nissan Sentra was still running nearby. His phone and cigarettes were still in the vehicle, right where his girlfriend said he always left them, Meriden Police Department investigators said in the incident report.
First responders tried to save Sloan’s life by providing emergency aid before he was rushed to Midstate Medical Center where he was pronounced dead at 6:59 p.m., less than 40 minutes after police were called to the scene at 6:21 p.m. on Saturday, police said.
A woman who was delivering a DoorDash order in the area told police that she was driving north on Hanover Road when she reportedly saw two men arguing near the silver Sentra, the police report said.
“She stopped her car when she saw one of them fall to the ground,” police said in the report, adding that she said she saw blood run from Sloan’s chest down his arm and onto his shoe.
As soon as Sloan fell to the ground, the woman told police, she saw the other man, identified later as 19-year-old Josue Ortega-Torres, get into a small white car with a dark-colored marking on it that was parked behind the Sentra, make a U-turn and drive down Hanover Road, police said.
The argument that led to the stabbing was brief, she told police.
“The whole altercation, from what she saw, lasted seconds to a minute at most,” police said in the report.
Another witness told police that he had left the nearby American Legion to pick up a pizza from a restaurant on Main Street when he reportedly saw a small car chasing a gray car through the intersection of Main and Hanover streets. The two cars were traveling “unusually close,” the man told police, according to the report.
He said he saw that the vehicles had stopped on Hanover Road and reportedly watched both of the drivers get out and get into an argument, according to the report.
The vehicles appeared “to be engaging in a road rage incident,” he told police, the report says.
The man said he allegedly saw one man’s hands go into the air — later identified as Sloan — and reportedly witnessed the other driver push him in the chest area. He did not see anything in the other driver’s hands, he told police, but when the driver left and the witness approached Sloan, he was having trouble breathing and was bleeding from his chest, police said in the report.
Investigators canvassed the area for surveillance footage and reviewed video recordings from a local store in which they saw a white Smart Fortwo — a compact Smart car — drive by the area. Investigators believed the car was still in the neighborhood and quickly found it partially covered by a tarp in the driveway of a home on Melville Avenue in Meriden, according to the report.
Law enforcement officers ordered everyone who lived in the Melville Avenue home to come outside and everyone compiled but Ortega-Torres, police said.
Ortega-Torres spoke to police from an upstairs window and refused to come outside for several hours, police said, at times allegedly mentioning that he had a gun. Ortega-Torres’ family members reportedly told detectives that he had a gun, possibly a rifle, and a SWAT team and negotiation team were called to the scene, police said.
Detectives interviewed Ortega-Torres’ mother who said her son was the only one who drove that car. She reportedly told police that he had gotten home that evening and covered his car with a tarp, which she said was unusual. When she questioned him about it, he allegedly told her it was because his car sometimes got dirty, she told police according to the report.
The mother “said she was suspicious of his excuse and did not believe him,” police said in the report.
The mother also reportedly told police that her son seemed tired, that he had some redness in his face and he took a shower when he got home, according to the report.
Several hours after police arrived, Ortega-Torres agreed to come out the back door unarmed. He was arrested and placed in handcuffs, police said. Police reportedly found a 12-gauge shotgun, a hard plate body armor vest and ammunition in his bedroom and in a gun safe, according to the report.
Detectives also allegedly found spatter and droplets of what they believed to be blood on the hood and front bumper of the vehicle and inside the car during a search, the report said.
Sloan’s girlfriend told police that Sloan had just brought his son to work at FedEx in Middletown. He arrived home and parked the vehicle out front and texted her, joking about a cupholder in the car being installed wrong. She said that he didn’t come upstairs after some time and she heard a lot of sirens and saw police personnel in the street by the vehicle, the report said.
Police would not confirm that the location of the stabbing.
Meriden police, with the assistance of recruits from the Connecticut Police Academy, conducted a methodical search of Hanover Avenue to Melville Avenue after the shooting to look for “any items of evidentiary value related to the untimely death of Justin Sloan Sr.,” police said Tuesday morning. The incident is still under investigation.
Ortega-Torres appeared in court in Meriden on Monday and was scheduled to appear in court next on Aug. 2. He is charged with murder and is being held in lieu of a $5 million bond, records show.