A 42-year-old Hartford man was killed in a crash with a tractor-trailer on Interstate 91 in Hartford Monday night, according to state police.

Police said Pedro Rivera was driving on I-91 north near exit 33 around 10:45 p.m. when he lost control of his vehicle and veered off the road.

When Rivera veered back on to I-91, the Toyota Corolla he was driving was hit by a tractor-trailer was traveling north.

Rivera was taken to Hartford Hospital, where he died of his injuries, state police said. The other driver was not injured.

State police are investigating the crash, which shut the highway down for several hours overnight. The road has reopened.

Anyone who witnessed the crash is asked to call State Police Troop H at 860-534-1000.

No injuries were reported after a delivery truck collided with a school bus on Interstate 84 Tuesday morning.

Police said the accident happened near on I-84 east near the Farmington/West Hartford line around 8:30 a.m. Police confirmed there were children on the bus.

Shelton High School Headmaster Beth A. Smith tweeted that the bus was a Shelton/Derby bus and that everyone on the bus was safe.

State police said no injuries were reported and there was only minor damage to the bus.

Police have arrested a man accused of stealing packages off the doorstep of a Glastonbury home last week.

Jason Carrier, 29, of Portland, faces a larceny charge after police say another driver saw Carrier pull into a driveway on Old Maids Lane on Dec. 1 and take packages off the doorstep of a home, then get back into his car and drive off.

When police found Carrier at his home he was arrested. Police said many of the stolen items were found and returned to the proper owner.

Carrier was released on a promise to appear and scheduled a court date of Dec. 14.

Naugatuck police are searching for a suspect who robbed the Subway on Old Waterbury Turnpike Monday night.

Police said the incident happened around 6 p.m. The suspect is described as a lone male wearing dark clothing and a mask.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Naugatuck police at 203-729-5221 or the Confidential Tip Line at 203-720-1010.

Hartford police are investigating an untimely death that was likely caused by a drug overdose, police said.

Police said the Hartford Fire Department was called to an apartment at 51 Whitmore Street around 4 a.m. Tuesday for a medical call. The female victim was taken unresponsive to Hartford Hospital where she was pronounced dead. She has not been identified.

Police were called in to investigate the incident as an untimely death around 4:20 a.m. The Major Crimes Division is investigating.

Hartford police are investigating another possible fatal overdose that occurred on Woodland Street Monday night.

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A large two-alarm fire destroyed the home at 460 Miller Road in South Windsor, but the residents are OK thanks to a 12-year-old neighbor who noticed the flames.

Officials and neighbors said a man and a woman live in the home and got out OK, but the man went back in for one of his dogs, but crews learned that the man and dog got out and were OK, according to the fire department.

The fire was reported around 7:15 a.m. and firefighters know of the house as a "high hazard" residence with an "excessive combustible fire load" with a basement and garage loaded with "extra stuff" and possible fireworks, according to a news release from the fire department.

Emergency crews heard what sounded like ammunition at the corner of the house and the homeowner said it could have been ammunition, according to officials. 

It burned for about an hour and the fire chief said belongings on the bottom floor and several additions to the house complicated efforts to put out the flames.

“Whenever you have a house with additional additions to the house, there’s always void spaces and areas that are hard to access and with the amount of combustibles inside the house, the fire load intensifies quickly,” South Windsor Fire Chief Kevin Cooney said.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but the homeowner thinks it might have started at the pellet stove. 

Chad Davis, a neighbor, said his 12-year-old son saw the fire and they alerted authorities, as well as the family. 

"He was getting ready for school, looked out and saw it and saw the neighbors' backyard was on fire," Chad Davis, the 12-year-old's father, said. 

Davis said his family immediately called 911 and the residents, who were asleep inside.

"That's when they grabbed their dogs and headed out," Davis said.

The building department determined the building was uninhabitable and the Red Cross is helping the residents.

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A Westport, Connecticut woman is one of at least 36 people killed in the massive fire at a warehouse in Oakland, California on Friday night. 

Riley Fritz, a transgender woman, who went by the name Feral Pines, was identified on Monday. 

Fritz, who was born Justin Fritz, was a graduate of Staples High School in Westport, News 12 has learned. 

It’s not clear how the fire that killed Fritz and so many others started, but officials said it erupted late Friday night during a dance party.  

Fritz had moved to Oakland a few months ago and her family members told News 12 she loved art and music and was truly happy for the first time in her life. 

“I had just texted her on Friday, telling her about something I was doing with my daughter that she and I use to do together and I know that she saw it, so that makes me feel better,” Riley’s sister, Amanda Parry, told News 12. 

Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced.

Learn more about the victims.

A man in his mid-50s is in critical condition and a woman is badly injured after an SUV crashed into a multifamily house in Meriden Tuesday morning.

Emergency crews have condemned the house and residents from five families have been displaced just before the holidays. 

The SUV crashed into a house at the busy corner of Broad and Wall streets this morning and the man who was driving was unresponsive behind the wheel when emergency crews responded, Captain Thomas Cossette, acting chief of the Meriden Police Department said.

He had to be pulled from the car and LifeStar medical transport helicopter flew him to Hartford Hospital, where he is listed in critical condition.

The female passenger was in the front seat, where she was wearing a seatbelt, and tried to crawl out the back of the vehicle, Cossette said. She is also at Hartford Hospital in serious condition and has facial injuries, as well as internal injuries, police said.

Witnesses said it appeared the driver passed out.

Police said they are looking into whether he suffered some sort of medical emergency because there is no indication he applied the brakes.

The SUV crashed into the laundry room and the impact blew out part of the foundation at the back of the house.

Residents who were home at the time of the crash were pretty shaken up. 

"I heard my roommate screaming, I looked outside and there was literally a car in our laundry room," Shannara Hanna, of Meriden, said. 

Five families who live in the house have been displaced and have been places in hotels of other apartments. But, police said no one who lives in the building was hurt. 

Residents were allowed to go into their homes and gather belongings. Now they are trying to figure out where they will go now, especially so close to the holidays. 

"I don’t know what we’re going to do for Christmas, where we’re going to stay," Georgianna Stockton, of Meriden, said. "I could’ve died. It's scary." 

The seven-year-old girl from Syria who has recounted on Twitter her family's struggle in the nation's conflict is back online, after the account went dark amid an attack nearby.

Bana al-Abed lives in besieged Aleppo, and says she is fine, despite a recent bombardment. Her Twitter account disappeared from the internet on Sunday, sparking speculation online that the mother and daughter had been captured.

The account's last tweet before the account was deactivated read, "We are sure the army is capturing us now," and was written by Bana's mother, Fatemah.

Some worried that the Syrian army had found the family's hiding place and deleted the account. The hashtag #WhereIsBana surfaced, as users wondered why the account disappeared. Author J.K Rowling, who has spoken with the girl before, tweeted messages with the hashtag.

But a spokesperson for humanitarian group Syria Charity told NBC News that the family was not captured, and the Twitter account returned Monday, though with Bana and her family apparently still in danger.

"Under attack. Nowhere to go, every minute feels like death. Pray for us. Goodbye," Fatemah al-Abed said.

Tuesday brought better news and direct word from Bana, though bombing was still on her mind. She said she was fine in her slightly more up-beat tweet, and that she is "getting better without medicine with too much bombing."

The al-Abed family has chronicled the horrors of living in Aleppo as the Syrian conflict continues. Their account has garnered 213,000 followers.

Relieved users sent positive messages to the family once the account resurfaced, urging them to stay safe and offering prayers.

The son of a former New Jersey mayor has been charged in connection with the death of a Hofstra University graduate who prosecutors say was stabbed 15 times in the chest in a luxury Manhattan apartment last month and then buried in a shallow grave in New Jersey.

Max Gemma, 29, of Oceanport, was arrested Tuesday after turning himself in to police.

The son of former Oceanport mayor Gordon Gemma appeared in Manhattan Criminal Court to plead not guilty to charges of hindering prosecution and tampering with physical evidence in the death of 26-year-old Joey Comunale, of Stamford, Connecticut.

Comunale's body was found in a shallow grave behind an old police station in New Jersey Nov. 16. James Rackover, 25, and Lawrence Dilione, 28, were arrested shortly afterward in his death. Though police initially charged them with murder, prosecutors have so far only charged them with concealment of a corpse, tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution in the criminal complaint, pending further investigation. 

Prosecutors said Tuesday they believe Gemma was in the apartment where Comunale died and that Gemma changed his clothing and hid evidence.

But Gemma's lawyers said there was no evidence or witness testimony to support the claims.

A charge of tampering with evidence "should involve more than changing his clothes. And we think it's something else," his attorney Mark Bederow said outside court. 

Bederow declined to specify the relationship among the three men. 

Gemma posted the $100,000 cash bond late Tuesday afternoon and left court in a waiting car without speaking to reporters. His father also declined to comment.

Gemma is due back in court on Jan. 17. He works in software sales, according to his attorney in court, and is free to return to work until the next court date. 

Police have said Comunale was stabbed to death in some sort of dispute after he, Rackover, Dilione, and three women returned from the Gilded Lily nightclub on 14th Street late Saturday, Nov. 12, or early Sunday, Nov. 13.

According to a criminal complaint, an informant told authorities Rackover was seen late Saturday leaving his apartment building and putting a large duffel bag into the trunk of a black Mercedes with tinted windows that was registered to Rackover's father. Records show the car leaving Manhattan and traveling through the Holland Tunnel to New Jersey, the criminal complaint says.

Dilione allegedly admitted he and Rackover dumped Comunale's body and told them where to find it. The young man had been stabbed more than a dozen times in the chest; his legs were burned and a gas canister was discovered nearby, the criminal complaint says.  

Bloody clothing, sheets and towels were found in Rackover's apartment during the course of an investigation, prosecutors said. The black vehicle that Rackover had been seen driving was later returned to Manhattan, left in a parking garage on East 58th Street, and a cadaver dog made a positive alert for a body or bodily fluids in the trunk area, the complaint says. 

Shortly after Comunale's body was found, his father, Pat, who had reported him missing, described him as "one of a kind."

"This is not something that happens to kids like this," Pat Comunale said of his son, who was an avid hockey player. "He didn't deserve this. He didn't go looking for trouble. It wasn't right. This is not right."

Two people are being taken to the hospital after an SUV and a pickup collided on New Britain Avenue in West Hartford and the pickup flipped over on its side, according to fire officials.

The crash happened near the entrance and exit ramps to Interstate 84 East.

Two people who were in the pickup are being transported for what appear to be minor injuries. The person is the SUV declined medical treatment.

The rollover is near the jug handle and crews put down chemicals after a fuel spill.

Traffic is getting by, but it is backing up.

Drivers can use South Main Street or Route 9 to avoid the area. 

Members of the Lyme-Old Lyme High School Band and Chorus will perform at Wednesday’s Pearl Harbor Commemoration event at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

About 100 students from Lyme-Old Lyme will be joined by others from across the country and Japan to create a mass band for a special performance marking the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The concert is a tribute to the lives lost on Dec. 7, 1941, and the war. More than 2,300 U.S. servicemen, nearly half on the battleship USS Arizona, were killed in the attack and 1,100 injured. After the attack, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered a speech before Congress, calling Dec. 7 a "date which will live in infamy," and the U.S. declared war against Japan.

You can follow along with the Lyme-Old Lyme high school students on Facebook here and here, and watch performance streaming live starting at 5 p.m. EST tomorrow.

A New York man convicted of rape in the 1990s has been arrested in Milford after police said he failed to register as a sex offender.

Police said the Broome County, NY Sheriff’s Office holds an arrest warrant for Herbert Arnold, 72, of Verstel, NY for failing to register as a sex offender. According to police, in the 1990s Arnold was convicted in the rape and murder of a 16-year-old.

Authorities believed Arnold may be in Milford, Conn, and Milford police took him into custody when an officer on patrol recognized Arnold’s vehicle from a description posted on a law enforcement website. Arnold was scheduled to appeared at an extradition hearing in Milford court on Monday.

The Oakland warehouse artists' enclave was supposed to be a safe place, emotionally and spiritually, for the artists and free spirits who chose lives off the beaten track. An electronic music party had also attracted many in the transgender community, who had come together on Friday night, as they did regularly, to dance with friends and blow off steam.

But physically, the enclave wasn't safe at all on Friday. A fire ripped through the illegally converted warehouse at 1305 East 31st Avenue in the city's Fruitvale neighborhood, killing at least 36 people.

It's the deadliest blaze in Oakland history, and it counts at least three transgender women among the victims: Cash Askew, 22, of Oakland; Feral Pines, 29, of Berkeley and Em Bohlka, 33, of Oakland.  

The father of one is lamenting how few spaces trans people have to gather safely.

"My heart goes out to the entire trans community who feel as if they must gather in unsafe buildings to experience their community and celebrate their identity," said Jack Bohlka in an Instagram post remembering his daughter, Em. 

Friends and family prefer their new names be used to identify them, instead of the ones they were born with, following commonly accepted tradition in the trans community. And that means authorities are now also dealing with an unorthodox situation; one they said they're willing to comply with, albeit with a few mistakes.

What's in a Name?
When Feral Pines was identified as a victim in the fire, the Alameda County Sheriff's Office on Monday first gave her name as Justin Fritz, her birth name. That was corrected later and the sheriff tweeted an apology.

In an interview on Tuesday, Alameda County Sheriff’s Sgt. J.D. Nelson said the coroner's office is now identifying the victims to the public by the names their families — not their friends — ask for, and will note the legal name, if different, on the official death certificate, which is the law. Alameda County sheriff's Tya Modete added that department was working with an LGBT advocate to report the proper gender identification.

A name means a lot in the trans community, a fact that was known by most, if not all, of the creative, musical and artistic party goers at the warehouse on Friday night.

"It's called 'dead naming,'" Carol Dauley, an audio engineer and past president of Transgender SF said in an interview with NBC Bay Area on Tuesday. "That means their old name no longer exists. It's disrespectful, and in the eyes of the trans community, there is never a good reason to use the old name."

Scout Wolfcave, executive director at the Trans Assistance Project in Portland and a friend to one of the victims, said using the right names and pronouns is especially important for trans people when they die.

"Many in the transgender community don't want to be referred to by the names they were given at birth, because when they transition from one gender to another, they want to make a clean break from the past," Wolfcave wrote on Facebook.

Pastor Megan Rohrer, of Grace Lutheran Church in San Francisco, said she appreciated that first responders were taking great pain to get pronouns correct.

"I just want to lift up how great I think that is, that they're taking the time to do their best, even though it's really hard," they said. (Rohrer uses they/their as gender pronouns.)

Rohrer also noted that the LGBT community at large has a long history of holding celebrations in unsafe places on the margins of the community, going back to the days of vice squads patrolling San Francisco.

"The trans community and the LGBT community, when they don't feel safe in other parts of community, often find safety amongst artists," Rohrer said.

And yet the warehouse was beautiful, according to Rohrer, and it seemed to them that it was a great place to have a party: "That's kind of the transgender experience. There's so much beauty and there's so much risk, all the time.

Here are brief portraits of the three women who died in the fire.

Feral Pines: 'Shined in the Sun'
Wolfcave was roommates with Pines, who moved to the Bay Area from Indiana and was originally from Connecticut. She graduated from Staples High School in 2005 and attended the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, where she studied offset lithography, her father said. She had always loved music.

"I had just texted her on Friday, telling her about something I was doing with my daughter that she and I use to do together and I know that she saw it, so that makes me feel better," Pines' sister, Amanda Parry, told News 12 in Connecticut. And in an email, friend Sarah Patterson said that Pines was a "syth genius with impeccable musical taste," who was also an "anti-facist" who was seen taking down swastikas inside the Ghost Ship.

On Facebook, Wolfcave reminisced about being really close with Pines — they loved and hated most of the same things.

"We also all had eerily similar senses of humor and were constantly joking about death, burners, body horror, poop, tiny glasses, gogurt," Wolfcave wrote. "Conversely, there were a few things that Feral and I would always argue about, like ... whether one would rather go to Burning Man or the Gathering of the Juggalos."

Pines moved to California recently and just "blossomed," Wolfcave wrote.

"She went from the comically sad basement dwelling synth collector," Wolfcave wrote, "to a person that shined in the sun, and moved up and down the 1, and took in the fresh air and saw all these fresh possibilities open up before her."

Cash Askew: 'Brilliant, Talented, Unique' Student
Askew, a graduate of Urban High School in San Francisco, was active in the Bay Area music and art scene and was part of a band called Them Are Us Too. "Them" is a preferred pronoun for many in the transgender community instead of "him" or "her."

The band's debut album on Dais Records, Remain, was released in 2015.

"Cash Askew was an absolutely loved and treasured member of the Dais Records family," the label and band's management team said in a statement.

"We were in awe of her talent, her gentle kindness, and her creative momentum," it continued. "Her passing is an excruciating loss that we may never fully process or recover from."

Askew also was a 2008 graduate of the Children's Day School in San Francisco. "She was a brilliant, talented, unique, nonconformist student," Head of School Molly Huffman wrote in a letter, noting that Askew transitioned to female after middle school.

CDS teacher Terry Askhinos wrote a letter to the school remembering Askew as "a gentle, free spirited 13-year-old who always found ways to be an individual, whether it was in her class work, her fiction writing, her fashion, her art, or her political convictions. Cash was always one step ahead of the rest of us and I often held her up as an example to the class of how to make learning a work of art."

Em Bohlka: Beginning her Transition
Her father, Jack Bohlka of Claremont, Calif. took to Instagram to document his child's life.

"Many of you will remember her as Matt. But recently she was transitioning to become a beautiful, happy woman. She took the name Em. I just wish with all my heart that she had more time to live her life as she truly wanted. My heart goes out to the entire trans community who feel as if they must gather in unsafe buildings to experience their community and celebrate their identity. Our communities must become more open and accepting of all people, all identities, so that everyone can enjoy a great party or concert in a space that is not a death trap."

He also told NBC Bay Area in a statement he will be establishing a fund at his local LGBT center in memory of Em, so that more transgender people will be able to become who they truly are, and so that there will be more safe spaces available.”

Donations to the Oakland warehouse fire victims can be made at YouCaring.com

NBC's Asher Klein contributed to this report. 

Route 69 in Prospect is closed between Center Street and Route 68 after a truck took down some wires. 

Crews from Eversource are at the scene and will turn off power and repair lines before the road reopened.

The state Department of Motor Vehicles and AAA Northeast could not reach a deal for AAA in Fairfield and New Haven counties to continue licensing and ID card renewal services for non-members after Dec. 31, according to the state DMV.

DMV officials said the agency has been in talks with the AAA franchise since it notified the state it would stop serving the general public and serve members only as of 2017.

AAA Allied, which serves Hartford, Middlesex, New London, Tolland and Windham counties, will continue to service all residents.

“The Department’s responsibility is first and foremost to the general public. We need to maintain service levels while controlling costs. As such, we cannot subsidize a private organization’s provision of DMV services if that organization is not willing to find ways to serve the general public,” DMV Commissioner Michael Bzdyra said in a statement.

He added that he hopes AAA Northeast will re-consider its proposals.

In a statement released on Tuesday afternoon, AAA Northeast said:

"AAA Northeast remains committed to working with state officials to extend the DMV program in AAA offices into 2017 and well beyond.  AAA has shouldered labor and other costs related to the program, which approached $1 million annually, since its inception in 2001. We remain willing to reimburse the state for an equitable portion of the additional expenses necessary to make the program work, though to date, those additional expenses have been somewhat of a moving target."

The remainder of Connecticut is served by AAA Club Alliance, with local headquarters in West Hartford, and it will continue to provide services to all members of the general public throughout its eight offices around the state, which are in Avon, Cromwell, Enfield, Manchester, Old Saybrook, Plainville, Waterford and West Hartford, Karen Christiana, general manager of AAA Club Alliance, said in a statement.

In October the DMV served the Fairfield and New Haven county AAA with a notice of default.

AAA Northeast offices are located at:

• Branford: 143 Cedar St.
• Danbury: 93 Lake Ave.
• Fairfield: 1201 Kings Highway 
• Hamden: 2276 Whitney Ave.
• Milford: 827 Bridgeport Ave.
• Norwalk: 495 Westport Ave.
• Stamford: 1101 High Ridge Road
• Waterbury: 835 Wolcott St.

Police have issued a Silver Alert for a 16-year-old Hartford girl who has been missing since last Thursday.

Irina Cunningham has been missing since Dec. 1, according to police.

She is 5-feet-5, weighs 140 pounds and has brown hair, blue eyes.

When she was last seen, she was wearing gray sweatpants, a gray sweatshirt and black sneakers.

Someone went into a Watertown church on Monday and stole dozens of wrapped gifts that were meant for underprivileged children, according to police. 

This weekend was the deadline for the collection of gifts and police believe the thief knew they were there when he or she broke into the First Congregational Church on DeForest Street between 3 and 4 p.m. Monday and stole 36 wrapped gifts, including toys, clothes and diapers, police said. 

Anyone with information on the burglary is asked to call the Watertown Police Department at (860) 945-5200 or Crimestoppers at (860) 945-9940.

Police are looking for the man who robbed a Stop & Shop in Groton on Tuesday morning. 

Police responded to Stop & Shop, at 220 Route 12, at 10:41 a.m. to investigate a robbery and learned that a man went to the customer service desk and passed a note demanding money to a store employee. 

He implied he had a weapon, but did not show one, according to police. 

The robber ran toward the Gold Star Highway and police said there was no information on a vehicle. 

Anyone with information about the robbery should call the Groton Town Police Department at (860)441-6712.