A Hartford man wanted in the murder of 21-year-old Brian Oliver this summer was captured by police outside a local strip club with a loaded, untraceable “ghost gun” in his pocket, court records show.
The victim, Oliver, is one of four young men killed this summer who were part of the same tight knit group of family and close friends in the Upper Albany neighborhood but whose shootings were apparently unrelated, police records show.
After a monthslong investigation, police charged Joshua White, 21, with murder, conspiracy to commit murder and a series of weapons offenses. He appeared Thursday morning in a Hartford courtroom in front of a dozen members of Oliver’s family.
An aspiring rapper, Oliver was gunned down early the morning of July 19 outside an Irving Street home after an argument and fight during a party at a North End home a few blocks away, according to court records released Thursday.
Oliver’s mother Sally Oliver and extended family, adorned in shirts and buttons memorializing him, remembered him as a bright young man focused on his music. They are now turning their focus to the lengthy prosecution process and met with court officials outside the courtroom where White was arraigned Thursday.
“Losing ain’t an option,” Sally Oliver said, invoking one of her son’s songs.
Police initially responded to a report of shots fired just before 2 a.m. July 19 and found shell casing of two calibers on Irving Street but could not locate a victim, records show. The next morning, a passerby reported to police that a man’s body was in the grass near the same scene, with a blood trail connecting both spots.
Footage collected from several nearby city and private security cameras showed Oliver walking and talking with several people just before walking down Irving Street, off camera, when audio on one camera captured the sound of almost a dozen gunshots, records show.
Investigators soon learned Oliver was involved in a fistfight and was accused of breaking several windows of a Garden Street apartment during a party hours before his death, but also found out he had an ongoing drama with several other people stemming from a separate fight at another party several weeks earlier, records show. Several of the people aware of that earlier fight, including White, were among those Oliver ran into after leaving the fight on Garden Street, the security camera video revealed.
Investigators identified White and obtained an arrest warrant, but they could not locate him this summer.
Detectives learned on Oct. 7, however, that White was expected to visit the Mynx Cabaret strip club in the North Meadows and set up there ahead of time to take him into custody, a second police report released Thursday details. Officers converged on the car when White arrived and found he was carrying an untraceable ghost gun in the front pocket of his sweatshirt loaded with an extended magazine and one round in the chamber, the report said.
White was arrested and charged that night with four weapons offenses and once in custody was served with the outstanding warrant charging him with murder, conspiracy to commit murder and carrying a pistol without a permit. He remains in custody this week in lieu of a total $2.25 million bond.
Just two weeks after Oliver’s murder, his close friend Zayon Collier was gunned down in his Blue Hills Avenue apartment on Aug. 4, hours before Oliver’s funeral.
Friends and family have described a heart-wrenching day, finishing Oliver’s funeral services and heading straight to an impromptu vigil outside Collier’s apartment building, still clad in the custom shirts they made to memorialize Oliver. Collier was supposed to serve as a pallbearer at the funeral.
Last week, Hartford police charged 22-year-old Mark Outlaw with accessory to murder and conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the fatal shooting of the 25-year-old Collier.
Records show the motives for the two friends’ shootings do not appear to be connected, and investigations into both are ongoing, but police officials declined to release further information about them Thursday.
The two were among four friends gunned down in a span of two months this summer.
Oliver and Collier’s close friends already were reeling from the murder of 22-year-old Trelique Ward, the brother of one of their friends, in June when Ward was attacked and killed during an apparent robbery. Aubrey Perry, 35, is accused of opening fire on Ward and was wounded when Ward returned fire but was arrested at the hospital and charged with murder. He has pleaded not guilty and remains in custody in lieu of a $1.25 million bond.
Violence impacted the group again a few days after Collier’s death when members of his extended family got into a fight after an evening planning his funeral on Aug. 9, and 29-year-old Troy Reid was shot and killed. Reid’s brother-in-law, 35-year-old Tanoah Jones, admitted to police he shot Reid during an argument over whether Reid may have been involved in Collier’s death and was charged with murder.
Court records indicate the four shootings weren’t directly tied together, but their victims were and the deaths have devastated the close group, family said.
Hartford has recorded 29 murders so far in 2021, a sharp increase that has put the capital city on pace to record one of its deadliest years in decades. The rise is not isolated to Hartford, however, and tracks closely with similar increases recorded in cities large and small across the country since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Zach Murdock can be reached at zmurdock@courant.com.
