A Brooklyn man has been charged in an incident that police say is connected to the fatal shooting of a St. Johnsbury man in a hospital parking lot Tuesday morning.
Jerry Ramirez, 35, of Brooklyn, New York, faces a charge of aggravated assault after he allegedly hit a woman in the head while they were in a car in the lot outside Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital prior to the shooting, police said.
Vincent Keithan, 44, was fatally shot a short time later, police said.
Nobody has been charged in Keithan’s death, which was ruled a homicide after a Wednesday autopsy.
According to a police affidavit written by Vermont State Police Detective Sgt. Francis LaBombard and filed in the aggravated assault case, Keithan had been in the same car as the woman who was struck in the head, Allison Roslund, moments before the shooting.
Roslund told police that after she was struck by Ramirez — whom she knew as “Mike” — Keithan got out of the car and started running away, and Ramirez chased after him, Francis wrote in the affidavit.
“Allison Roslund lost sight of Keithan and ‘Mike’ as they ran off,” Francis wrote. “Roslund then heard a gunshot and she knew Keithan was gone.”
Ramirez is in the custody of the New York State Police after he was hospitalized late Tuesday after police chased his vehicle on the Taconic State Parkway in the town of Milan, New York. He will be extradited to Vermont to face local charges, according to a Vermont State Police press release.
A warrant for Ramirez’s arrest was issued and bail set at $50,000, according to an order signed late Wednesday by a Superior Court judge in Caledonia County.
The charge carries a maximum prison term of 15 years.
According to LaBombard’s affidavit, Vermont State Police received three calls about events that preceded the shooting — including allegations of kidnapping and a shooting threat — in the overnight hours leading up to Keithan’s death, starting at 3:37 a.m.
That’s when police received a call from Ashley Roslund, who reported — via information from a third party — that Keithan and Allison Roslund may have kidnapped another woman in a Volvo sedan, according to the affidavit. (The relationship between Ashley Roslund and Allison Roslund was not made clear in the document.)
Police said they received another call from Ashley Roslund about a half-hour later, reporting there were “two sets of drug-dealers” with shotguns and fentanyl at Allison Roslund’s house in Lyndonville, about 12 miles north of Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital, who were “not letting them leave the house.”
Ashley Roslund said one of the drug dealers, named “Mike,” had threatened to shoot Allison Roslund, according to the affidavit.
Allison Roslund called police at 5:10 a.m. reporting she was parked at the hospital emergency department in the Volvo sedan and “was in fear for her life,” according to the affidavit.
Police told Allison Roslund to come to the St. Johnsbury barracks at 7 a.m., according to the affidavit. Vermont State Police spokesperson Adam Silverman said she did not go to the barracks.
The shooting was reported at about 8:50 a.m.
Vermont State Police does not operate around the clock, and overnight calls are usually evaluated by a patrol commander to determine whether they represent “an immediate threat to life or property, in which case an trooper would be dispatched,” Silverman said in an email.
“By its nature this is a judgment call,” Silverman said.
Police’s information from Ashley Roslund was third-hand, he said, and could not be immediately verified. In response, police issued an alert for the Volvo sedan and issued a welfare check “on the parties reported to have been involved.”
The third call, from Allison Roslund in the parking lot, “involved information that also warranted further investigation but did not indicate there was an imminent danger,” Silverman said. “The caller indicated she felt safe in her current location and agreed to meet troopers at the St. Johnsbury Barracks at 7 a.m., although she ultimately did not arrive for that meeting.”
Allison Roslund later told police that after she called 911 from the car in the hospital parking lot, a silver Jeep — later identified as a gray 2020 Jeep Wrangler with Connecticut plates that was wanted by authorities — pulled up with two men in it.
The man she knew as “Mike” got into the sedan and tried to take the keys away from her, according to the affidavit. At that point, “he struck her on the head, but she could not recall if he hit her with an object.”
Allison Roslund identified a photo of Ramirez as the person she knew as “Mike,” the driver of the Jeep and the person who hit her in the head and chased Keithan in the hospital parking lot, police said.
Ramirez rented the Jeep on Feb. 19, according to the affidavit.
Police sent out a description of the suspect and vehicle. At about 4:36 p.m., New York State Police spotted and chased the silver Jeep south on the Taconic State Parkway in the town of Milan, police said, about 265 miles from St. Johnsbury.
After what turned out to be a lengthy, high-speed pursuit involving K9 units and helicopters, according to Mid Hudson News, troopers deployed stingers — a device to deflate tires — to disable the vehicle in the town of Clinton.
The Jeep then crossed into the northbound lanes, and New York trooper Ryan Disher said he saw two men exit the vehicle and run into the woods. He chased them until he lost sight of them in the woods, according to the affidavit.
New York State Police eventually found and arrested both men, one of whom was Ramirez, the driver. The passenger was uninjured and subsequently released. Ramirez was taken to a local hospital with injuries that were not considered to be life-threatening and is reported to be in stable condition, according to Vermont State Police.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Brooklyn man charged in incident prior to fatal shooting in St. Johnsbury.