A convicted felon fails to appear in court on weapons-related charges; I-Team discovers it's not the first time

Lina Portman4 weeks ago

0 2 minutes read

(WFSB) – The I-Team is learning new details tonight about the man accused of bringing a flare gun into a Walmart in Wallingford that was modified to shoot shards of glass.

Police arrested Tyler Dowd for this crime, and there are questions about whether he should have still been in prison at the time.

Dowd was supposed to appear in Meriden court Friday on charges related to the Walmart incident. He did not appear and a new arrest warrant was issued.

Dowd was arrested May 28 after Wallingford police said he carried a flare gun, which he had modified to shoot shards of glass, into the Walmart.

Police say he also had a pocket knife and blade on him and had bitten a police officer.

He also violated an order of protection, having been ordered to stay away from the Walmart in April, after being arrested for threatening to shoot and/or blow up the establishment.

He was released in the April and May cases.

Criminal justice professor Mike Lawlor says it shouldn't always be that simple.

“He’s still on the street. That’s part of the problem that I think the Legislature is trying to solve by creating a system where prosecutors can request that a person be held without bail until the charges are resolved,” Lawlor says.

But should Dowd have been in prison at the time of these crimes?

In March of last year, Dowd was sentenced to two years in prison for a 2021 case involving violating a protection order, burglary and assault on a police officer.

He was released from prison a few months later, in November 2023.

The Department of Corrections tells the I-Team that's because he had credit for time served, after being in prison for months.

When he was released, probation labeled Dowd a “serious firearm offender” due to previous violent convictions in 2015.

For this reason, he would be placed under zero tolerance monitoring and sent to a treatment program.

Dowd was kicked out of that program three months later and arrested for a probation violation in February.

He walked free and did not appear in court to deal with the matter on May 30. » This is one of the key issues. This man has been identified as a very high risk firearm offender by the Probation Service. They rape him, he goes to court and he can get a bondsman to bail him out,” Lawlor says.

A new arrest was ordered against Dowd for failure to appear in court May 30 on a probation violation and failure to appear Friday in the Walmart case. If arrested, he will face $150,000 bail.