Police have yet to find concrete answers after 61-year-old Mark Pappacoda was shot on Ferry Streey in New Haven Tuesday night.
His family says he was simply out buying a lottery ticket when his life was cut short.
“He was a funny man. He’d come into your room and you knew he was in there. Always made everyone laugh, he was a big jokester,” said Pappacoda’s daughter Melissa Ruggiero.
A jokester, and a man whose family was often on his mind.
“He actually just had a conversation with my uncle a few weeks ago, he couldn’t wait to win Powerball so he could take care of all his family,” Ruggiero said.
Pappacoda was out buying a lottery ticket near his home in New Haven when police say a man, captured on surveillance footage, shot and killed him outside a package store.
“In the video, it appears as if the suspect is attempting to rob Mr. Pappacoda before shooting him. The Bureau of Identification responded and processed the scene, and detectives from the major crimes unit are leading the investigation,” New Haven Police Officer Scott Shumway said.
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Officials say it’s the 10th homicide in New Haven this year -- 14 fewer than this time in 2021, but a tragedy that Ruggiero said she’ll never fully process.
“You hear wrong place, wrong time, but I don’t really know if that helps at all,” Ruggiero said.
As a mother of three, Ruggiero said it’s been even more difficult grappling with the tragedy while trying to restore some sort of hope for her children moving forward.
“You have to always look at the positive,” Ruggiero said. “I don’t want them to take this and just always live in fear or anything because you can’t do that.”
She hopes that going forward, her family’s tragedy can help inspire solutions.
“I’m hoping that with my dad’s death, and I know in the news I’ve seen some other recent shootings, that we find the problem,” Ruggiero said. “Fix the problem.”
Police say they are still trying to identify the shooter. Anyone with information is asked to contact the New Haven Police Department Investigative Services Division at 203-946-6304.
