Mom Latasha Brown at vigil with photo of her son Tashawn, 18, the day after his killing. Photos of Suggs included in U.S. Attorney's Office court filing. A fight broke out at the U.S. District courthouse Tuesday after a judge sentenced a 20-year-old to nearly 21 years in prison for his gang involvement and the murder of Tashawn Brown, almost four years after the 18-year-old’s death at Edgewood Park.Judge Victor Bolden handed down that sentence during a hearing in Courtroom 2 of the courthouse at 141 Church St., after multiple family members of both the victim and the defendant, Quaymar Suggs, testified in support of either the maximum sentence of 30 years or the minimum sentence of 20 years. When the courtroom was dismissed, family members left their seats and went out into the hall. Brown’s family members called out ​“Tashawn Brown” in commemoration. As attorneys and family members waited to receive electronics stored with marshals, the victim’s and the defendant’s families began to exchange words, and the emotions that had heightened during the hearing came to a head.A fight broke out, and courthouse security ran to restrain family members, pushing some out of the courthouse and locking the doors. Some held Brown’s brother Taymare down on the ground, eventually ordering press and attorneys to leave the room. Security could be heard calling out ​“Taser!” Marshals cleared the lobby, ushering people to a side hallway; police were called to the scene. Five minutes later, at least one of the participants was arrested, calm was restored, and the lobby reopened. New Haven police spokesperson Officer Christian Bruckhart confirmed a 17-year-old New Havener was arrested, though he declined to identify them by name.Suggs, a member of the Exit 8 gang, pleaded guilty in July 2024 to conspiracy to engage in a pattern of racketeering activity, including acts of violence, narcotics trafficking, and gun sales. He admitted to the May 19, 2021, shooting of Brown during a barbecue at Edgewood Park, when Suggs was 17 and Brown was 18. He also admitted to breaking into and stealing from a state trooper’s car in 2021 along with other gang members. Brown had graduated high school and was set to attend Porter & Chester technical school on a scholarship. A Tuesday press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office described Brown as an associate of a rival gang. (Back in May 2021, Brown’s mother Latasha described the scene of her son’s murder from her own perspective.)The prosecution’s sentencing memo described May 19, 2021, and the fight that occurred between Brown’s brother and Suggs, as well as other Exit 8 members. Suggs and the gang members promised to come back; Brown left with his brother. They all returned later, and Suggs shot at Brown and his brother from his car, in the driveway of another house. Suggs originally faced a maximum sentence of life in prison. His plea agreement ensured a range of 240 months to 360 months. He has been held since March 24, 2023."I Can't Even Cry Anymore"First to testify before Bolden Tuesday at the sentencing was Brown’s mother, Latasha Brown, who said that while she did not hate Suggs, she believed he deserved the maximum penalty. “The impact of my son to be killed in front of me, in front of his siblings … over a fight, something that could have been put aside,” she said before Bolden. ​“I see my son lying on the ground, reaching out to me.” The single mother of eight children described being unable to touch her son at the hospital because his body was evidence.“I can’t even cry anymore. I’m all dried out,” she said.But while she didn’t hate Suggs, she said she did hate his mother, who she said should be standing beside her son as a defendant. “He deserves the maximum,” she said, because while her son died, Suggs is allowed to live. ​“I wear my son on my shirt, in a necklace with ashes.” Other members of Brown’s family took their turns speaking on his behalf, many of them joining Latasha in wearing sweatshirts commemorating Brown. Tashaonna Sledge, Brown’s sister, stood before Bolden with her son, who had never known his uncle, in her arms.“I suffer with PTSD now,” she said. She said she doesn’t put all the blame for the murder on Suggs. ​“I feel sad for you. You didn’t have anyone to tell you to put it aside, let it go.”Brown’s older cousin, Raquel Castro, said that she has waited ​“1,333 days” for justice for her cousin. She also said she has PTSD. ​“I never saw someone get shot in front of me, and for it to be my own cousin …” She described being in therapy, and argued for the maximum sentence. ​“Do he have nightmares? Do he have PTSD? Do he replay that moment in his head every day? … Every day, he gets to talk to his family.” Another brother of Brown, Taymare, said, ​“I only got 13 years with my brother.” He turned to Suggs, who was sitting between his lawyers. ​“I hope you rot in there,” he said. ​“When you’re out, and I’m old … I’m gonna make sure to go to your grave and spit on it.”Bolden told Taymare to address the judge, not Suggs."Street Life Will Not Save You"When it was time for the defense to speak, Suggs apologized. “The person you’re talking about today is not the same person sitting here,” he said. He apologized to the Brown family ​“for the trauma and pain I caused them.” To his siblings, for ​“letting them down” and not being there for them. And to the community of New Haven, and to the city’s youth, he said, ​“The street life will not save you.” Suggs’s cousin spoke on his behalf, as did his brother, Lamar Lawrence. Lawrence, emotional as he addressed Bolden, said, ​“I’m 18, and it’s been years since I’ve even seen him … My brother is my protector, and I don’t want to keep growing up without him.”Lawrence described the difficulties they faced growing up without stability, support, or role models, noting weeks when they ate as little as a shared can of ravioli. His brother always took care of him. ​“I swear he will do anything to make sure everyone is OK, even if he isn’t,” he said. ​“That day took both my brothers, the people I have to take care of me.” The prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jocelyn C. Kaoutzanis, and Suggs’s defense attorney, Charles Kurmay, made final sentencing arguments.Kurmay emphasized that Suggs was 17 at the time of the shooting and 20 now, and ​“didn’t have half the advantages many have … circumstances are important for understanding who he is and how he got here.”Kurmay said Suggs was also the son of a single mother, who he said was not very present. His father was in prison for most of his childhood and adolescence. Their family lived in the Island housing projects and the Farnam Courts housing projects. He was ​“inducted and indoctrinated” into Exit 8 at the age of 14, and had ​“a limited range of relatives available to him.” In the defense’s sentencing memorandum, social worker notes from 2014 describe Suggs and his brothers not attending school because of their mother, and other neglect they experienced at home. Kaoutzanis, meanwhile, argued that ​“Mr. Suggs chose to join a gang that celebrated violence,” to have guns, to make videos of those guns, ​“to celebrate and perpetuate violence” in a way that encouraged even younger kids than him to join. She said that Suggs remained in the gang even after Brown’s shootings, and that ​“Mr. Suggs was young, but Mr. Brown was also young.” “I do sincerely hope that Mr. Suggs is working on himself, that he gets out of prison and turns around his life, but he needs some time to be separated,” she said, and learn ​“that what he did was not OK. … So people can go to a barbecue and not worry about being killed.”When the time for sentencing came, Bolden told Suggs, ​“I appreciate the challenges you faced growing up — the deep instability, the hunger,” the search for ​“something in the world to be a part of.” He said the sentence he would hand down was preceded by ​“the sentence you’ve given yourself in your mind and your soul — no bars, but a prison nonetheless.”In June of 2024, Bolden sentenced Exit 8 member Jaedyn Rivera to 15 years in prison and quoted South African comedian Trevor Noah. He quoted Noah again on Tuesday: “‘We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited.’” He identified Suggs as having a limited imagination.Bolden said that Suggs must be prepared to live a life of freedom, even before he knows what freedom is, and to think about how he will be different. He cited civil rights leader Nelson Mandela, who spent 30 years in prison but kept his mind and soul free. Ultimately, Bolden handed down a sentence of 250 months in prison, and five years of supervised release.