The Bobster
Senior News Editor since 2004
Correction officer charged with murder after allegedly firing more than a dozen rounds in road-rage incident
Connecticut correction officer William Lucky is being held on $2.5 million bail for allegedly gunning down motorist Scott Kracke during a violent road-rage dispute on a local highway.
nypost.com
Correction officer charged with murder after allegedly firing more than dozen rounds in road-rage incident
By
Social Links for Jorge Fitz-Gibbon
Published Jan. 24, 2024
Updated Jan. 24, 2024, 4:49 p.m. ET
A Connecticut correction officer is facing murder charges after allegedly firing off more than a dozen rounds at a 49-year-old motorist during a shooting after a heated road-rage dispute on a state highway.
William Lucky, 32, an officer at the New Haven Correctional Center, fired as many as 18 rounds at Scott Kracke — including several after the victim was already on the ground — during the deadly Jan. 14 encounter on I-691 in Meriden, the Hartford Courant said Wednesday.
Lucky’s 3-year-old son and the boy’s mother were inside his Honda Civic at the time of the killing– while Kracke’s fiance and friends looked on in horror as he was violently gunned down, the outlet reported.
Lucky fled the scene after the shooting but surrendered to Connecticut State Police on Tuesday.
The incident played out shortly after 8 p.m. when the two men got into a road-rage feud and cut each other off while driving on the busy interstate highway.
The two pulled over near Exit 2A and exited their vehicles before launching into a shouting match. That’s when police said Lucky opened fire, hitting Kracke in the head and torso.
According to police, witnesses said Lucky stood over the victim after he fell backward onto the roadway and fired “several more rounds in rapid succession.”
“I didn’t want this,” Lucky allegedly told his child’s mother when he got back in the car and started crying. “What the [expletive] did I just do?”
The woman told cops “things just happened very fast,” and said she “blacked out” when the shots rang out while she was tending to her toddler.
The correction officer later told police he fled the scene because his young son was in the car and “he was afraid the other party would come after him,” according to an affidavit reviewed by the Courant.
Kracke was rushed to Hartford Hospital after the shooting, where he was pronounced dead.
Lucky drove home to North Haven, where his son and the boy’s mom were picked up by family.
.
He was arraigned on the murder charge and is being held on $2.5 million bail, the outlet said.
Lucky has been placed on paid administrative leave at the New Haven jail where he has worked as a guard since December 2018.
In a statement, AFSCME Local 1565, which represents 1,800 state corrections employees, said the incident is tragic for everyone involved.
“At this time, we will allow the investigative process to take place,” Mike Vargo president of Local 1565 of AFSCME, which represents corrections officers, told WVIT-TV News.