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Norwalk Boy Witnesses Grim Scene, Aftermath

NORWALK, Conn. — A child saw it all: two dead bodies in a car for hours, Norwalk police investigating, families wailing in grief, the bodies being removed from the car and the family returning a day later to construct a shrine to the dead girl — just 22 years old.

The 13-year-old boy said he was there before police arrived Saturday morning to investigate what they describe as either a murder-suicide or a double homicide, on Avenue B. He could describe victims Iroquois Alston and Rickita Smalls in the car, a description that matched that given by other witnesses. Alston was on the passenger side, he said, and Smalls had been driving. Both died of gunshot wounds, although police are waiting for autopsy results to release further details.

The boy sat on a bicycle Monday, describing it all to a neighbor who had been away for the weekend. She was looking at pictures on a board, put up against a picket fence by Smalls' family on Sunday, but she didn't know what had happened.

First he told her that the car, a dark sedan, had been parked in front of where the pictures were now. She was surprised.

"They killed them in the night," he told her. "But at 7:30 in the morning ... we saw them there."

He had no doubt, he said. The two people in the car weren't sleeping — they were dead.

There were many candles in front of the photos; the boy was impressed that two of them were still burning, given that they were lit Sunday and it had rained. They had both seen the group who put the shrine up, about 10 people, they said, crying.

She was shocked that the boy had seen the bodies, but he seemed nonplussed and said it was all right. He said he had returned later that morning. "When we got here, everything was blocked and the people were crying," he said. He went under the police tape, which he got away with because he is small, he said. "There was a woman there, sitting, but I got under the thing. ... They didn't take out the bodies yet. They were investigating. And then when they uncovered them, put them on the thing to take them, everybody started crying."

Many people had watched as police investigated Saturday. Two families with young children stood at the police tape for hours. Some watched from their porches. Police put up tarps to try to shield the scene, hanging them off trees.

Smalls' family arrived at about 1 p.m., after hearing a rumor that she was the female victim in the car. The boy said Alston's mother came later, broke the police tape and ran in, screaming. "The police like got her, but she was screaming, 'Where is he, where is he?'" he said, adding that everybody started crying.

He had heard that Smalls was expected somewhere else that night.

The woman said she lived around the corner, and that it is a good neighborhood. "We've never seen anything happen like this," she said. "It's really sad."

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