Re: Wife & Two Daughters of Prominent Doctor Killed in Home Invasion


"tiny dancer" <tinydancer357@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Many photo's and video at link posted below:
Perps have LONG rap sheets
Home Invasion Suspects Identified
Cheshire Home Invasion: Wife, Two Daughters Are Killed; Doctor Is Badly
Beaten. Two Suspects Held.
By COLIN POITRAS, DAVID ALTIMARI And HILDA MUÑOZ

Courant Staff Writers

9:59 AM EDT, July 24, 2007

CHESHIRE

Police have identified a 26-year-old Cheshire man and a 44-year-old
Winsted
man, both with long criminal histories, as 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 Horn 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.

The men are being held on $15 million bail each for an appearance today in
Superior Court in Meriden.

Town police officers raced to Dr. William A. Petit Jr.'s home on Sorghum
Mill Drive on Monday morning and found two men running from the burning
house. Inside, Petit, a prominent doctor and father of two who had been
brutally beaten about his head and left tied up in the basement, hopped 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 had been called to the house at 300 Sorghum Mill Drive about 9:20
a.m. on the report of a possible home invasion. Jennifer Hawke-Petit had
been forced by the intruders to withdraw money from a nearby bank. While
there, she somehow alerted bank employees - possibly orally or by passing
a
teller a note - and that brought the police.

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.

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.

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

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.

"I just can't say enough good things about how proud I am of our police
officers and firefighters," Milone said. He credited his police officers
for
making a quick arrest.

"They exemplified the best in public service," Milone said. "Without their
great work this could have been a far worse tragedy."

William Petit, 50, is a prominent endocrinologist and medical director of
the Joslin Diabetes Center Affiliate at The Hospital of Central
Connecticut
in New Britain. He is a past president of the state chapter of the
American
Diabetes Association and was elected to the ADA Hall of Merit in 1994.

Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, was a nurse and co-director of the Richmond
Health
Center at Cheshire Academy. She had been a nurse at Yale-New Haven
Hospital
and was a Penn State graduate. She also had been involved with the Girl
Scouts and Habitat for Humanity.

At Cheshire Academy, a private day and boarding school, she was considered
a
friend, a peer and a confidant for students as well as a health care
provider.

"If anybody ever wanted someone taking care of the kids when they were not
right there with you, it was her," said Philip Moore, the school's
director
of communications. "She was a mom and a health care professional. That's
how
she approached her job."

Hayley Petit graduated in June from Miss Porter's, where she was co-editor
in chief of Chautauqua, the school's "journal of scholarly writing." She
was
also co-captain of the crew team and a member of the cross country and
basketball teams. She was set to attend Dartmouth College, her father's
alma
mater, where she planned to study medicine.

Jennifer Hawke-Petit was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis eight years
ago.
The family was active in the Connecticut chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis
Society and Hayley had formed a fundraising team called "Hayley's Hope"
that
raised more than $54,000 for the cause over the past eight years.

Michaela was looking to continue her older sister's legacy by adding
"Michaela's Miracle" to the campaign.



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Has anyone seen a timeline that would show how long it took the police to
respond? I'm certainly not blaming this tragedy on anyone except the two
killers, but I also don't understand how the woman gave information to the
teller and the bank notified police, yet the perp had time to take the
victim back to the house, kill three people (or at least one, if the other
two were killed before they returned), and set the house on fire. That
*could* all have been done in a few minutes, but it doesn't seem likely.
This also assumes that the bank notified police immediately instead of
waiting and discussing it for awhile--again, something that I don't know but
would rather doubt.

MaryL


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