One more for the "Things like that don't happen here" crowd.

[Musketeer]

Home invasion with victims left to burn to death...

This is firearms related in that an armed homeowner may have been able to prevent this but an unarmed one is probably doomed.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,290460,00.html

Three Killed in Connecticut Home Invasion, Suspects Arrested
Monday, July 23, 2007

CHESHIRE, Conn. — Three people were killed Monday after intruders broke into their home, held them hostage for several hours and apparently set the house on fire, police said.

Authorities surrounded the home after a woman was taken by one of the suspects to a bank and somehow alerted an employee her family was being held hostage, The Hartford Courant reported on its Web site.

Two suspects tried to flee after apparently setting the home ablaze, but were quickly arrested when the car they were driving crashed into two police cruisers, police said.

No information on the suspects or the victims had been released by midday Monday. Police scheduled a news conference for later in the day.

Neighbors said the home belonged to the Petit family — William Petit Jr. and his wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and their two daughters.

Petit, 50, is the medical director of the Joslin Diabetes Center Affiliate at The Hospital of Central Connecticut, and his wife of 22 years worked at the Cheshire Academy, a boarding school.

Staff at Cheshire Academy were trying to confirm the news Monday afternoon, said spokeswoman Colleen Reilly.

"Everyone here is devastated. So, we are still in shock," Reilly said.

"It's just a very difficult day here. We are just finding about it now," said Philip Moore, director of communications for the school.

Hawke-Petit, 48, worked at the boarding and day school as co-director of its health center, taking care of students and faculty there, Moore said.

"She was very good at educating kids about good health, not just taking care of them when they are not feeling well," Moore said.

Police said there was one male survivor, and two of those who died were female. Information on the third victim was not available. It was not immediately clear how the three died.

The Rev. Ronald A. Rising, a neighbor, said he has known the family for more than 10 years.

"They're just a lovely family," he said. "It's just awful to think it would happen to a family like that in this community. You don't think about those things happening."

The upper-middle class neighborhood includes colonial homes with well-kept lawns.

Cheshire, a suburb with a population of more than 29,000, is just east of Waterbury and about 15 miles north of New Haven.

[Manedwolf]

Connecticut = Lots of wealthy, quiet people, somewhat liberal + restrictive gun laws = LOTS OF VICTIMS.

Sounds like the criminals are realizing.

[Wildalaska]

Can we get the rest of the facts before we jump to conclusions

WildthenwecancommentinaneducatedfashionAlaska

[Manedwolf]

Conclusions? Have you ever been to Connecticut? It is like that. A good bit of the state is just like one big sprawling gated community of "it can't happen here" neighborhoods just like that one.

It's just a reminder of what everyone knows, that vicious violent crime by sociopathic killers can most certainly happen absolutely anywhere, there is no magic safe area.

[Musketeer]

CT is as described but with isolated areas of "unpleasanteness" that are removed from the more enlightenned parts of the state. Bridgeport actually banned ski masks back in the 90s becasue they were often worn for purposes other than warmth...

[sectshun8]

Yeah, and still Bridgeport is the most violent city in CT. Ask any cop in the state and they will tell you NOT to go there. I actually lived up Groton.New London area of CT for 8 years, with stays in North Stonington and Ledyard which are very gun friendly areas with hunt clubs and private ranges. It's near the Rhode Island border. But the farther you get towards New York, the more money people have, and the more scared they get. Sadly, those scared people, who make up 10% of the state, run 95% of it!

[Antipitas]

Mother, Two Daughters Killed In Cheshire Home Invasion

CHESHIRE - A mother and her two daughters were killed during a home invasion Monday morning that ended with the arrest of two suspects who rammed several police cars as they tried to escape, authorities said.

A fourth family member -- the woman's husband and the father of the girls -- was badly beaten in the hours-long invasion. He was in serious but stable condition at St. Mary's Hospital in Waterbury.

Sources identified the victims as Jennifer Hawke-Petit, a nurse at Cheshire Academy; William A. Petit Jr., a doctor at New Britain General Hospital; and their two daughters, Hayley and Michaela. "This is a very sad day for us. This is a horrible tragedy," a somber Michael Milone, Cheshire's town manager, said at an afternoon press conference.

Cheshire police Lt. Jay Markella said the invasion started in the early morning -- perhaps 3 a.m. At around 9 a.m., one of the suspects forced Hawke-Petit to drive to a local Bank of America branch and withdraw money, while the other assailant remained in the home with the rest of the family, sources said. Hawke-Petit was able to alert a bank employee that her family was being held hostage.

Bank employees contacted Cheshire police, and an officer dispatched to the home at 300 Sorghum Mill Drive found the house in flames, state police said. Two suspects then attempted to flee in a car and crashed into the officer's cruiser. Two other Cheshire officers set up a roadblock a short distance away and the suspects rammed those police cars as well. The suspects were then taken into custody, state police said. No officers were injured.

Police have not released the names of the two men in custody.

A source said William Petit had been badly beaten around the head, and stumbled out of the house while it was burning. He was able to make it to a neighbor's home to seek help. The other family members were found dead in the home. The cause of their deaths is unclear. The office of the chief state medical examiner plans to perform autopsies Tuesday.

There's more at the link, mostly biographical details of the family.

Sounds like an early morning break-in that caught the family unawares. Since the police are withholding the names of the suspects, they may be juveniles.

Further speculation should wait until more details are known.

Here's a link that everyone should have. It's gives you access to many of the newspapers around the U.S., so that you can confirm what you might read on Fox News or CNN. RefDesk.com is organized by state, so it's easy to navigate and track down leads.

[FirstFreedom]

Very sad. If I were him, I'd be wishing they killed me too - to lose two kids at once - devastating. Not to mention his wife.

[Bellevance]

All the details are not included here, but this one must have been real bad. And as rare as something like this may be, to my mind anyway, it underscores why responsible people must keep home defense weapons available and should try to teach everyone in the household how to use them. We can't know (from this piece, at least) whether guns in the home might have thwarted these guys, but I'd be willing to guess they might have made all the difference.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/A...-Invasion.html

[Tanzer]

Made me sick. Glad the cops got the SOB's. That's all I'll say 'cause it makes me want to spit nails.

[Capt Charlie]

Multiple threads merged.

[Antipitas]

Home Invasion Suspects Identified

CHESHIRE - Police have identified two parolees with long criminal histories as the suspects in a horrific home invasion in which a mother and her two daughters died Monday.

Joshua Komisarjevsky, 26, of 840 North Brooksvale Road, Cheshire, and Steven Hayes, 44, of 5-H Horne Ave., Winsted, each face a multitude of charges, including first-degree aggravated sexual assault and first-degree kidnapping. State police said the investigation is continuing and that more charges will be filed.

Both suspects were on parole after serving time in prison for past burglaries. They were arraigned on the new charges Tuesday in Superior Court in Meriden, with bail for each man set at $15 million.

Town police officers who raced to Dr. William A. Petit Jr.'s home at 300 Sorghum Mill Drive Monday morning said they saw the two men running from the burning house and attempting to escape in a car owned by the victims. After ramming three police cruisers, the suspects were arrested at gunpoint.

Inside the home, Petit, a prominent doctor and father of two who had been brutally beaten about his head and left tied up in the basement, was able to hop up the cellar stairs as the flames spread. He was the only one to make it out alive.

As he struggled, flames roared around his wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, a popular nurse at Cheshire Academy, who was unconscious and possibly already dead on the first floor.

The charred body of his oldest daughter, Hayley, 17, a recent graduate of Miss Porter's School in Farmington, was found at the top of the main stairs.

In a second-floor bedroom down the hall, the youngest in the family, Michaela, 11, was found tied to a bed. Her body was too badly burned to tell how she died.

The office of the chief state medical examiner will perform autopsies on the three victims today.

Police were dispatched to the house about 9:20 a.m. after Jennifer Hawke-Petit was forced by one of the suspects to drive to a local bank branch to get money. Hawke-Petit was able to alert a teller that her family was being held hostage because the suspect who went with her waited outside. At the bank, Hawke-Petit withdrew $15,000 from a bank account. The money was later found in the family vehicle the suspects used to flee.

As police were closing in on the Deaconwood neighborhood of half-million-dollar homes, the two men jumped in the family's Chrysler Pacifica SUV parked in the driveway. The fleeing suspects rammed a police cruiser that tried to cut them off in front of the house and continued west on Sorghum toward a police roadblock about a block away.

Sgt. Chris Cote and Officer Tom Wright, both members of the department's SWAT team, had left their cars at the roadblock and were headed toward the house armed with semiautomatic rifles. Officer Jeff Sutherland was positioned at the roadblock.

Instead of slowing for the roadblock, the fleeing suspects gunned the SUV's engine and raced toward Sutherland. The SUV slammed into two police cruisers in the center of the roadblock. Their front ends mangled, the police cars spun apart from each other on impact. Sutherland escaped injury. The Pacifica, front end damaged and airbags deployed, rolled 30 feet before stopping against a neighbor's manicured lawn.

Officers, guns drawn, swarmed the vehicle and pulled the suspects out.

Komisarjevsky is charged with one count each of first-degree assault, first-degree aggravated sexual assault, first-degree burglary, first-degree arson, conspiracy to commit arson in the first-degree, first-degree robbery and risk of injury to a minor, plus two counts of first-degree larceny and four counts of first-degree kidnapping.

Komisarjevsky in 2002 was sentenced to three years in prison and six years of special parole by a Bristol judge after pleading guilty to 11 counts of second-degree burglary. Authorities involved in the case said he would wear military night vision goggles and break into homes to steal electronic items while his victims slept.

The judge, James Bentivegna, called Komisarjevsky a "cold, calculating predator." The prosecutor in the case, Ronald Dearstyne, said at the time that Komisarjevsky began robbing homes when he was 14 in Cheshire. Dearstyne told the judge that Komisarjevsky would carry a military backpack, equipped with items including a knife, to rip through window screens.

Komisarjevsky had told police he burglarized homes to pay for a drug habit. But the prosecutor and judge said his actions were more calculating than those of a junkie needing cash for a fix. At his sentencing, Komisarjevsky apologized to his victims.

Komisarjevsky's home on North Brooksvale Road is about two miles from the Petit's home. A man at the North Brooksvale address gave the Courant a written statement Tuesday morning but would not answer questions. The statement read: "This is an absolute tragedy. Our deepest sympathy goes out to the Petit family and all those whose lives they touched. We cannot understand what would have made something like this happen. There is nothing else we can say at this time."

Hayes is charged with one count each of first-degree aggravated sexual assault, first-degree burglary, first-degree arson, conspiracy to commit arson in the first-degree, first-degree robbery and risk of injury to a minor, plus two counts of first-degree larceny and four counts of first-degree kidnapping.

He has a long history of burglary and larceny convictions going back 25 years. Hayes accumulated 23 disciplinary actions while in prison dating back to the 1980s, authorities said in court today.

Investigators found a car - believed to belong to one of the suspects - in the Quarry Village subdivision about 1-1/2 miles away from the Petits'.

On Monday, investigators had not determined what brought the men to the Petits' home.

William Petit was listed in serious but stable condition at St. Mary's Hospital in Waterbury Monday night.

Neighbor Kim Ferraiolo said she had just spoken to William Petit about 7:30 p.m. Sunday and nothing seemed amiss. "They were the nicest people, just a great family," said Ferraiolo, who moved next door about three years ago.

Ferraiolo said a neighbor alerted her to the fire Monday morning and she tried to call Petit at work, but was told he never showed. She said Petit likes to tend to his flower beds and "has a great sense of humor."

Ferraiolo, like other stunned neighbors, tried to understand why the Petits' home was picked. "It's just hard to understand how someone could do something like that."

Investigators believe the two men barged into the home sometime after 3 a.m. and held family members hostage for hours, sources close to the case said. Shortly after businesses opened at 9 a.m., one of the men took Jennifer Hawke-Petit to the Bank of America branch office in Maplecroft Plaza several miles away and forced her to withdraw money.

Shortly after they returned to the house - as police were racing to the scene - the suspects set fire to the residence and fled.

State arson investigators were at the badly burned house late Monday searching for possible accelerants. Detectives were expected to enter the house later in the evening.

Cheshire Town Manager Michael Milone praised police and firefighters for risking their lives responding to a dangerous crime scene.

Neighbors said that shortly after the fire was extinguished, a firefighter climbed a ladder to enter a second-floor bedroom window in search of possible victims and then quickly backed out. Police SWAT team members then moved in and secured the home, witnesses said.


Chronology: Home Invasion

Here is the sequence of events, according to sources and police statements.

1. Early morning. Two intruders enter family home at 300 Sorghum Mill Drive, Cheshire.

2 . About 9 a.m. one intruder forces Jennifer Hawke-Petit to drive to the Bank of America on Route 10. She alerts a bank employee that her family is being held hostage. Minutes later, Hawke-Petit and the intruder arrive back at the house.

3. Cheshire police officers arrive and find the home in flames. Fleeing suspects crash the family's vehicle into an officer's cruiser, then into two other Cheshire cruisers, before being taken into custody a block away. At some point, a badly beaten William Petit stumbles from the burning home and makes it to a neighbor's home. Emergency personnel find bodies of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and daughters Hayley and Michaela.

I'm getting the impression that having a gun would have done nothing - Of course, we don't know for sure. What we do know is that these guys were semi-professionals.

[Manedwolf]

Neighbors said that shortly after the fire was extinguished, a firefighter climbed a ladder to enter a second-floor bedroom window in search of possible victims and then quickly backed out. Police SWAT team members then moved in and secured the home, witnesses said.

I'm guessing that something that made a professional firefighter, someone who has likely seen people burnt to a crisp, back out really quickly, plus the multimillion-dollar bail means that whatever they saw, it was really...bad.

Joshua Komisarjevsky, 26, of Cheshire and Steve Hayes, 44, of Winsted, were charged with assault, sexual assault, kidnapping, burglary, robbery and arson. Bail was set at $15 million each, and state police have said that additional charges are likely.

One girl was 17, the other was younger.

Does Connecticut have a death penalty?

[Musketeer]

I'm getting the impression that having a gun would have done nothing - Of course, we don't know for sure. What we do know is that these guys were semi-professionals.

That is why I have a 100 pound Rhodesian Ridgeback as a first line of defense. He may not stop them but he will certainly let me know they are there and buy me time.

[Musketeer]

I believe killing a witness to a crime is a qualifier for the Federal Death Penalty. Killing everyone in the house after robbing it, their bank and raping them was clearly done with the intent to keep them from testifying against them.

That poor father must be comlpetely destroyed.

[USP.40]

They were arraigned on the new charges Tuesday in Superior Court in Meriden, with bail for each man set at $15 million.

To me the fact they would be offered bail in any amount is disgusting. Why the hell aren't they being held without bond? It doesn't matter if they couldn't pay it or not it's a matter of principle. That's why I have a dog, pistol, and shotgun with me at night. So they coud leave in bodybags.

[Antipitas]

There are new details at the last link I posted. For decencies sake, I will only post one relevent detail. Go to the link if you must, but please, there is no need to post what it says. Our imaginations are quite sufficient, I daresay.

Among other details to emerge about the case today:

# The lone survivor, Dr. William A Petit Jr., may have confronted the burglars before he was badly beaten with a baseball bat, tied up and left in the basement.

If this is true, then a gun may have been usefull afterall.

[Capt_Vin]

This unfortunate incident really hit hard, considering I personally know the survivor, Dr. Bill Petit. Back in the late 80s and 90s, he was an Emergency Department Physician at one of the two hospitals in the city I worked in. Many of the patients I brought in on the ambulance were treated by him. He is a well liked, knowledgable, and very caring individual, who didn't deserve this. Then again, nobody does.

It is situations like this where the 'three strike rule' should be a federal law. At the present time, Connecticut does not have that law. Maybe now, law makers will look to add it to CTs lawbooks. Would it have prevented this from happening? Who knows. But, it definately would hhave lessened the chances.

Not to start probs with any other posters, but I noticed alot of "Connecticut Bashing" going on in this thread. As a former resident of Connecticut (born in Waterbury, (raised and lived in suburbs for 40 yrs) I take a deep offense to the bashing. Connecticut is not "Lots of wealthy, quiet people, somewhat liberal + restrictive gun laws = LOTS OF VICTIMS." as one poster said. It is a state full of hard working proud people trying to get by like the rest of us. You show me a state that doesn't have it's "wealthy, quiet and somewhat liberal" group of people and one state without some type of restrictive gun laws. Yeah, there are some areas with wealthy people, but every state has em. As far as the lots of victims, ..... I don't think so. Don't bash some place til ya lived or spent time there.

[teeroux]

Hopefully people can learn from a tradgedy like this.

That a man in blue with a gold shield will not always be there to rescue you.

Sometimes you have to save yourself.

[Baba Louie]

Sometimes you have to save yourself.

About 99.9% of the time.
So very tragic a story. 03:00... While some type of firearm might be part of the solution, a K9 or two would certainly fit into that equation.

Of course, paroling criminals works , but at a cost to whom?

[Playboypenguin]

Whenever I read stories like these I do three things.

I feel sorry for the people it happened to...

I remind myself that things like this are so very rare and they are not a reason to give in to paranoia...

I think to myself that things like this are the very reason I carry.

[Musketeer]

From Antipitas' link...

Two recent parolees who apparently met at a halfway house for nonviolent offenders were arraigned Tuesday.

...

Although corrections officials described each man as having a "minimal violence history," Pidgeon emphasized that their prior criminal histories involved burglary. "That's going into an occupied premises for the purpose of committing a felony," he said.

...

Corrections officials said in a statement that both suspects "were deemed to be appropriate candidates for supervised parole in the community based on their criminal history, which involved the minimum level of violence."

I am so glad our system classifies "Home Invasion" as "Non-Violent." News Flash, there is nothing NON-VIOLENT about forced entry into an occupied dwelling. Such individuals are not breaking in so that they may play Monopoly with the occupants.

[Manedwolf]

I just read the new information in the article.

Swift execution is too good for these disgusting animals.

And I agree, if someone breaks into a home where the occupants may be present, what do they think is going to happen if they're confronted?! It's not a nonviolent offense...that's why the law says you're allowed to use deadly force against them if they're in your home!

At a sentencing hearing for Komisarjevsky in 2002, authorities involved in the case said he would wear military night vision goggles and break into homes to steal electronic items while his victims slept.

[Musketeer]

Don't forget that the knife he carried he said was only for cutting the screens to the homes he was breaking into... If confronted he would never think to actually use it...

[209]

I'm sure our fine State Reps will find a way to suggest some more anti-gun laws due to this. The fact that a gun wasn't used won't even come into play. At least we do have a death penalty here, but trying to actually use it is problematic.