By OSHRAT CARMIEL & STEVE GOODE

On Sunday afternoon, Mark Denison was dead, his funeral planned for later this week. On Monday morning, he was alive, accepting an apology from the Hartford police chief for his mistaken demise.

While the Denisons were relieved, another family grieved for Scott Houle, 31, of East Hampton, who was driving Denison's car when he was shot and killed early Sunday. His longtime girlfriend, Erika Cochrane, 27, tried to explain the loss Monday to their four daughters, who range in age from 1 to 8.

"I told them that God has a time for everyone and sometimes we don't understand it, but we have to trust God that he's doing the right thing," Cochrane said.

Hartford police admitted Monday they strayed from their normal procedures when they misidentified Denison, 37, as the victim of a drive-by shooting and broke the news to his parents during a pre-dawn visit Sunday. After 12 hours of grieving and a call to a local funeral home, George and Jane Denison of Middletown learned that their son was alive and told police.

On Monday, police invited the Denisons to headquarters to tell them "we're sorry."

"Unfortunately, it's not necessarily the protocol that we exercise here," said Lt. Paul Hammick, head of the department's major crimes division. "It was a mistake."

Hammick said that detectives did not follow the usual protocol for identifying a crime victim - fingerprint and photo analysis - because they had strong reason to believe that the victim was Denison.

Although the Denisons declined to identify their son's body in the morgue, police say photos of Mark Denison were hanging in clear view in their home, including one on their refrigerator of him triumphantly holding a striped bass.

Police said the man in those photos most certainly matched the shooting victim in the car - and the detectives headed back to Hartford confident enough to publicly release the name of the victim as Mark Denison, a carpet layer from Hebron.

They were so convinced Denison was dead that it took three phone calls and a personal appearance by Denison before they agreed they were wrong, George and Mark Denison said Monday.

Instead, the man killed in the drive-by shooting on Cabot Street was Houle, a friend of Denison's who was driving Denison's Kia Sportage through the North End around 1 a.m. Sunday, police said.

Mark Denison said the two met about a month ago at work at Discount Carpet Warehouse in East Hartford. They were playing backgammon and drinking beer at Denison's place Saturday night when, Mark Denison said, Houle got a call saying there was an emergency, that one of his daughters was sick, and asked to borrow the sport utility vehicle.

The two men, both about the same height with closely cropped hair, strongly resemble each other, police say. Mark Denison agrees he and Houle looked alike, although he said Houle was about 50 pounds heavier.

The investigation into Houle's death is continuing, but Hammick said the motive was likely "narcotics-related." Houle had been convicted of larceny, burglary and failure to appear charges in the mid-1990s, records show, and had worked off and on as a carpet layer in eastern Connecticut.

Houle had been living with a cousin's family in East Hampton.

Cochrane, of Colchester, was Houle's girlfriend of 10 years and the mother of his daughters Tara, 8, Breann, 6, Elizabeth, 2, and Carly, 1. She and Houle had gone through some rough times but Cochrane said they were planning to marry because they loved each other and their children deeply. She remembered him as a good and loving father who enjoyed basketball and cooking on the grill.

Cochrane said that Houle had used drugs in the past, but that as far as she knew he wasn't using them at the time of his death. She said she didn't call Houle to say one of his daughters was sick and didn't know who could have.

Services for Houle were scheduled Friday at Spencer's Funeral Home on Main Street in East Hampton, Cochrane said.

Early Sunday, police found a vehicle crashed into a fence on Cabot Street. The driver had multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene.

When detectives found Mark Denison's license and registration on the passenger seat, they believed he was the victim.

"You have two guys who have a similar physical makeup, a similar description, you have the victim in the car," Hammick said.

The victim was also wearing sweat pants with no pockets, which could explain why the license and registration were on the front seat. Using the information on the license, detectives located Denison's parents in Middletown and decided to go to his parents' home rather than submit the victim's fingerprints for analysis, Hammick said. Denison has a previous arrest record, so his fingerprints would have been available in a police database for comparison, police said.

The detectives who arrived at the Denisons' home at 5:30 a.m. Sunday asked the couple to positively identify their son's body. They declined, according to Lester McKoy, assistant Hartford police chief.

"They were sure it was Mark, and I'm not going to question them," George Denison, 62, said Monday.

George Denison then called the Biega Funeral Home in Middletown to make funeral arrangements. He called Denison's two sons, 18 and 11, to tell them of their father's death. And he called Denison's boss at the carpet store to ask if he could collect his son's belongings from the office.

That's when the shock came: Denison was alive. He was with his boss when his father called with news of his death.

Denison took the phone. "I just said, `I'm here. It's not me,'" he recalled.

Then he had to convince Hartford police. Denison, who said he always kept his license in the car because he doesn't carry a wallet, called police headquarters. Then Denison's roommate called. Then his boss. But Mark Denison said dispatchers dismissed them all as crank callers.

"I kept saying, `This is me, I'm not dead,' " Mark Denison said.

Finally, Denison and his father arrived at police headquarters Sunday night to prove his existence. Now convinced, police invited them back on Monday to receive a formal apology from Police Chief Bruce P. Marquis.

McKoy said that the dispatchers answering the phones were civilians who deal regularly with pranksters and who were unaware of the homicide investigation that the major crimes division was conducting. While the handling of the calls is still being investigated, McKoy conceded it was likely that the calls were treated as pranks.

Hammick said the department will re-emphasize the importance of following proper victim identification procedures. McKoy said it was unclear if disciplinary action will be taken.

"We're looking to see if this was done because our policies and procedures are flawed or if people didn't follow policies or procedures," he said.

Following Monday's meeting with the chief, Mark Denison was still shaken, but satisfied. "I accept their apology. I don't know if my parents do."

His father added, "It's something that can't happen again."


Courant Staff Writers Matt Burgard and Josh Kovner contributed to this story.

 

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