Clarice Elarabi (pictured) is suing the city for the death of her brother, chef and gardener Michael Randall, in a 2019 illegal rooming house fire on West St.
Clarice Elarabi woke up at 3:12 a.m. feeling “just so hot. Like, on fire.”
She stuck her head out of the window. She took a cold shower. She tried and failed to go back to sleep. “I was so hot,” she said, “I didn’t know what was going on with me.”
Two hours later, Elarabi learned that her twin brother’s house in the Hill had erupted into flames.
The blaze took his life. It hurled her into life-altering grief. And Elarabi is now preparing to argue in court that the City of New Haven could have prevented it.
A Hamilton Street parking lot will remain a Hamilton Street parking lot for the time being, now that a local landlord has withdrawn a housing application in the face of several neighbors’ car concerns.
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Maya McFadden | May 10, 2024 8:53 am
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Maya McFadden
Ari checks out a preserved black swallowtail butterfly.
In the school’s garden space, Clinton Avenue School fifth-grader Ari brought a magnifier close to a green, rounded leaf plucked from a dandelion and discovered tiny pearls — better known as caterpillar eggs.
Fair Rent's Wildaliz Bermúdez with new tenants union rep Zach Postle.
A cracked window at 1455 State.
Zach Postle and his neighbors got tired of waiting days and weeks and months for their landlord to respond to maintenance concerns like broken windows and busted heating, so they formed a tenants union — the sixth to officially file with City Hall, and the fifth created at an Ocean Management rental property.
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Maya McFadden | May 9, 2024 1:35 pm
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Maya McFadden Photo
Miriam Camacho, back at FAME with her new book.
Former Principal Miriam Camacho returned to her old school in Fair Haven to encourage students to always hold on to their home cultures — and, when possible, to make sofritofrom scratch.
A proposed rendering by Patriquin Architects of what a Union Station-adjacent development could look like.
It’s official: Union Station and its adjacent lots are now a “Transit Oriented Community,” where taller, denser developments supporting car-free living may soon take shape — so long as new housing builders can navigate an extra bureaucratic step.
Yale senior Craig Birckhead-Morton and attorney David Grudberg in court Wednesday.
Donning keffiyehs and blouses and dress shirts and the occasional suit and tie, nearly 50 Yale students took their turns appearing before a state judge to face criminal trespassing charges stemming from their arrests at recent pro-Palestinian protests on campus.
The judge continued each case until dates in July or August, taking care to accommodate students’ summer break schedules when determining whether each should return in person or online.
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Maya McFadden | May 8, 2024 8:06 am
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Maya McFadden Photo
Juniors Josh, Radwaa, and A'Mere map out the Salvadoran Civil War.
Hill Regional Career High School junior Josh Burgess wrote the words “causes and effects of Salvadoran Civil War 1980s” inside a circle, and then drew lines connecting the words “historic inequality,” “murder,” and “oligarchs” to that circle.
He did so as part of an African American and Latino studies course that encourages students to understand how different parts of world history relate to one another — and that builds off of recent state legislation designed to boost the diversity of topics covered in Connecticut social studies classrooms.
Because classes were closed for last month’s presidential primaries, the last day of school for New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) this year will be Monday, June 17 rather than Friday, June 14.
A gun purchased in Milford ended up connected to a Hill homicide — after the purchaser lent the firearm to a relative’s friend, who lent it to another friend, who then tried to sell the gun in New Haven, only to be shot and killed himself.
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Lisa Reisman | May 7, 2024 12:26 pm
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Lisa Reisman photo
Well-wishers gathered Sunday for Sister Geneva.
The late Geneva Pollock.
Geneva Pollock showed up.
She showed up for the three generations of students she taught English to at Jackie Robinson Middle School; for the neighbors she met on her Newhallville door-knocking tours; for anyone she heard had lost a loved one and was grieving.
On a brisk, grey morning, 125 people showed up to honor the legacy of Pollock, who died in May 2020 at 76 years old, with a street corner renaming.
The four-foot-nine dynamo who grew up picking cotton in Alabama went on to become “a teacher, a ward co-chair, an usher, a mother and grandmother, a friend, my friend, and so much more,” said Claudine Wilkins-Chambers, as she waited for the street renaming ceremony to begin. “She did so much for so many of us.”
... before filling the Aldermanic Chamber for Monday's vote.
The Board of Alders voted not to adopt a proposed resolution supporting a ceasefire in Gaza on Monday evening, prompting backlash from over a hundred protesters.
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Laura Glesby and Thomas Breen | May 6, 2024 5:33 pm
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Laura Glesby Photos
Alexandra Daum highlights new landscaping and more sustainable energy ...
... as part of Science Hill development projects.
Yale is seeking to build up its scientific campus by digging down into the earth, as revealed during a presentation on future buildings with a massive underground presence.
Clockwise from top left: Up to 64 new apartments eyed for Hamilton St.; developer Yoon Lee; the 63 Hamilton parking lot; Lost in New Haven's Rob Greenberg.
A bid to provide lots more places for people to live on Hamilton Street has prompted pushback from some neighbors over where current and future residents and visitors will be able to put their cars.
