He accepted a plea bargain and is still posting $2 million bail after being convicted of murder and first-degree assault for shooting two men in the back in Hartford in late December 2018. A man began serving a 25-year prison sentence on Thursday. His sentencing hearing is over.
Abdul-Hakim Ali, 33, had an address listed on Burnside Avenue in East Hartford when he was arrested three days after the shooting, but was sentenced when he made a plea bargain in Hartford Superior Court. agreed with
But Thursday’s hearing was an opportunity for the family of West Hartford murder victim Ross Stone, 35, to tell Ali what he took from them.
Stone’s uncle and godfather, Stu Winograd, said Stone “had a charming smile as a boy.” It was one of several times Winograd’s voice broke while speaking or reading what other members of his family had written about Stone.
“All Ross wanted was a loving family,” continued Winograd.
He said that Stone’s relationship with the mother of his two children was “at times tumultuous, but his love for his children knew no bounds.”
He recalled how Stone’s eyes lit up when he was able to buy school supplies for his oldest child, his daughter. Marilyn Winograd, 93-year-old grandmother, said in a letter read by Stu his Winograd in court that Stone’s twin sons were too young to remember him when he died. said he couldn’t.
Stu continued to make bad choices as an adult in prison before being released in 2017, starting with family and origin issues.
“In the last few years of his life, we weren’t in the best of relationships,” admitted Stu Winograd. But he also said Stone appeared to turn his life around before being fatally shot in his street in Hartford’s Gardens on the afternoon of December 27, 2018.
In a letter Stu read in court, Stone’s mother, Wendy Mare, asked Ali why he had committed the murder. But Ali didn’t answer that her question with a brief apology to his family and the Stones.
“May God forgive you,” Mehr wrote.
Marilyn Winograd said in a letter that Stone’s daughter “had a close and loving relationship with her father.”
She remembered how her grandson met her daughter at the end of the school day and took her home.
“Twenty-five years don’t punish murder,” she wrote.
Shot alongside Stone was Elijah Adorno, now 29, of Hartford. He sustained several gunshot wounds to his stomach and lower leg, but survived. Ali was convicted of first-degree assault for shooting Adorno and sentenced to 10 years in prison, running concurrently with his 25-year sentence in the Stone murder case.
When his case was first called, Ali hugged his family before walking to the courtroom well. Her one woman in his family group was in tears throughout the sentence.
Speaking before the court, Judge David P. Gold said of the two families, saying: Society may change if people contemplate the consequences. ”
Speaking of Stone’s family, the judge told Ali: What they want is what you think. ”
