On the evening of May 18, 2021, a dispute near the Mila Supermarket on Albany Avenue in Hartford escalated into a fatal shooting that killed 43-year-old Lavar Jackson of West Hartford. The confrontation began outside the store involving Jackson, Jorge Rodriguez-Dones, and a third man. An exchange of gunfire inside the store left Jackson struck; he exited and collapsed on the street and was taken to St. Francis Hospital, where he later died of multiple gunshot wounds.

Hartford police identified 25-year-old Jorge Rodriguez-Dones as the suspect and charged him with first-degree manslaughter with a firearm and carrying a pistol without a permit; bond was set at $1.25 million. Rodriguez-Dones’s defense raised a strong claim of self-defense, and legal proceedings later resolved with a plea to a reduced weapons charge and a three-year sentence to run with a separate Bloomfield sentence. Does anyone have information about the initial confrontation or the people involved that could shed light on what happened that night?