Niagara Falls police executed search warrants at six homes on Tuesday in a hunt for evidence tied to a pair of holiday weekend homicides and other recent shooting incidents in the city.
Falls Police Criminal Investigation Division (CID) detectives, assisted by agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), investigators with the New York State Police and Niagara County Sheriff’s Office and Emergency Response Teams from the NFPD and sheriff’s office, fanned out through the city, hitting locations in midtown, the South End, Monteagle Ridge and Center Court.
Warrants were executed simultaneously at homes at 1555 and 2489 LaSalle Ave. Simultaneous warrant executions also took place at a duplex at 2904 20th St. in Center Court and at an apartment at 4600 Hyde Park Blvd. Apt. 24.
Police concluded their activity around noon by executing a warrant at a home at 638 22nd St.
Detectives seized what appeared to be a quantity of ammunition and gun parts from the LaSalle Avenue homes and the residence on 22nd Street.
Law enforcement sources confirm to the Gazette that the warrant executions are tied to the investigation of a pair of homicides over the July 4th holiday weekend, as well as shootings that occurred two weeks earlier. Falls police also confirmed the warrant activity in a written statement.
“No person was harmed during these events. The results of these search warrants are not being released at this time due to them being a part of investigations,” CID Captain Sandi Arist said.
Jayla Brown, 19, and Jalin Rios, 22, both of the Falls, were each gunned down in separate shooting incidents Sunday morning.
Brown died from wounds she sustained in a hail of gunfire at the intersection of Highland and Fairfield avenues at about 1 a.m. Sunday. Rios died just two hours later during a blaze of bullets outside of the Bakery, a former bar in the 3000 block of Niagara Street.
On Monday morning, City of Niagara Falls Code Enforcement officers posted a Cease and Desist Notice on the entrance door to the bar. The notice cited “excedence [sic] of occupancy” as the reason for shuttering the Bakery.
The bar has reportedly been operating without a liquor license and was being rented to various “promoters” to stage events. The Bakery’s operations have been tied by law enforcement sources to a promoter who has been linked to gun violence in the city of Buffalo.
Buffalo Police Commissioner Erika Shields said Monday that 11 people were shot in the city over the holiday weekend. Six of those victims were tied to violence that erupted after what was described as “a large street takeover party” near East Delavan and Grider streets on Buffalo’s East Side.
“We need to focus on the fact that this was one promoter who promoted an event that was geared towards creating chaos and violence,” Shields said at a news conference.
Shields declined to name the promoter, but said he is based in Buffalo and had been charged with a misdemeanor last year for his involvement in a similar event. She did not disclose the nature of the charge.
CID detectives reportedly do not believe there is a connection between the homicide outside the Bakery and the slaying on Highland Avenue.
On Tuesday afternoon, Falls City Council Chair Brian Archie held the first of a pair of scheduled Community Grief Support events at the Doris Jones Resource Center. He told a crowd of close to 100 residents that “tragedy strikes a little too frequently these days.”
Archie told the gathering that he hoped “through prayer and collective unity” that the community could confront the sudden increase in youth-driven gun violence.
“We have to take this to the streets. This is a street fight,” he said. “We need a unified message that we’re not going to stand for this anymore. Our youth are hurting and they think they’re not being heard.”
Archie said young people in the Falls were using “weapons of war” and were fighting “over nothing.”
A number of local pastors said they believed that “times have changed” and that youth in the Falls “are lost and need someone to talk to, someone to learn from.” Though none seemed certain about ways to achieve that goal.
Some said people living in the community needed to speak up with information that might help police find the killers.
But a second victim of the gunfire outside the Bakery, a 20-year-old male who was treated for non-life-threatening wounds and released from Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center, has reportedly refused to provide CID investigators with any “useful information.”
“The church has to be an active part,” Pastor Jesse Scott of Word of Life Ministries said. “God help our city right now. Niagara Falls is better than this.”