The husband of a 46-year-old woman who was found dead in their Newington home in September has been charged with her murder.

Police said 45-year-old Michael Torbicki Jr. is accused of shooting his wife, 46-year-old Patricia Torbicki, in their Gilbert Road home on Sept. 21.

Police responded to the home around 9 a.m. that Thursday morning after receiving a 911 call from a neighbor who was taking a walk with her grandson and said a woman who was covered in blood, lying in the doorway.

Police later found Michael Torbicki with serious injuries inside the home and he was transported to a local hospital.

The medical examiner determined that Patricia Torbicki died of gunshot wounds to her head and lower extremities and her death has been ruled a homicide.

Police served Michael Torbicki Jr. with a warrant Thursday and he has been charged with murder. No photo of his has been released.

Bond was set at $2 million. He is being detained and will be arraigned Friday.

Tempers flared at the monthly Blue Hills Fire District meeting in Bloomfield.

NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters have broken numerous stories about perks and benefits the three members of the fire commission receive.

In the case of the Blue Hills Fire District, taxpayers were trying to establish bylaws to get controls on how commissioners spend their money. But at the latest fire commission meeting, two of the three commissioners stripped that right away. 

There are more than 50 fire districts like this in the state, that set and collect their own taxes and do not answer to anyone, even a town or city council.

Many have watched the prior reports about thousands in stipends and bonuses, 20 gallons of free gas per week and cellphones commissioners receive to oversee a fire department serving half a town of roughly 20,000 and they want accountability.

Commissioners have said in the past these precedents were set many years ago and have been followed by each administration. T

"You get a stipend of $5,000 you get cellphones you get gas, you get a credit card, that's b------t and that needs to stop," one taxpayer Mark Manson told the board. 

That’s a big reason taxpayers want to put in a set of bylaws, which currently don’t exist. A citizen committee had begun meeting to establish them, but then at their latest meeting, two of the three commissioners that would have to abide by these bylaws decided to dissolve the bylaw committee.

The commission chair said it was set up with just a signup sheet and the commission’s attorney advised that was improper.

"I make a motion that the commissioners do the rules, the bylaws," Commissioner Jacqueline Massey-Greene said. 

Ariel Marzouca-Jaunai, the chair of the commission, said the public will be advised of when commissioners meet to discuss the bylaws.

"You can come in and make your statements. We're not going to be hiding anything," Marzouca-Jaunai said. "But the commissioner will have the final approval of the rules and procedures."

Commissioner Tanya Farmer voted against the idea of dissolving the citizen-led bylaws committee, saying she could not support this move because it presents a conflict of interest.

"It's not proper for us to make rules for ourselves. So that's the reason I wanted the commission to appoint the people that are already on the committee and let them continue their work," Farmer told the NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters.

The two commissioners who voted to approve the bylaws themselves refused to explain why they took making the bylaws out of the hands of the taxpayers.

In terms of the real reason why the bylaws committee was dissolved, several members told us privately it is because there may be a move to re-establish the performance and Christmas bonuses for commissioners, which have not been paid out since the NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters first story on the fire district aired last fall.

One of the world’s top forensic scientists based in Connecticut offered insight into the complex investigation into the mass shooting on the Las Vegas strip.

While a motive still hasn’t been determined, Dr. Henry Lee explained the steps investigators are taking to figure it out at a news conference Thursday at the University of New Haven.

"Why he picked that location must have a reason,"  Lee said.

Many mass shooters share a common trait, Lee said.

"Most of them are a loner, they feel their life is failing, falling apart," he said.

Twelve days later, Las Vegas law enforcement still do not know why a lone gunman armed with an arsenal of weapons opened fire on the country music festival from a suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.

"Many mass killer or serial killer, they want to go with a bang," Lee said. "So whether or not that’s a motive, I think investigators should look into."

Investigators are looking into other possible reasons for the shooting such as psychological disorder or a gambling debt, Lee explained.

"That room whether or not that’s a high roller floor,” he said, “that’s important, too," the doctor said. 

A crucial part of the investigation is to revie any security camera footage from inside Mandalay Bay, Lee said.

"Look at how those weapons was transferred and whether or not he had accomplice and how long he’d been in that hotel," Lee said. "How many times he’d been in that hotel."

In developing a profile of the shooter, Lee said investigators will look into his financial history and final communications.

"Check the credit card, check the income and his financial situation and his computer of course cell phones," he said. "What’s the last message he sent out, what’s the content of this message."

Lee founded the Institute for Forensic Science at UNH. He’s also the former director of the Connecticut State Police Forensic Science Lab.

Almost 40 percent of American adults are obese, the highest rate ever recorded for the U.S., according to a Friday report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nearly 20 percent of adolescents are obese, also a record high, NBC News reported. That comes out to one in five adolescents aged 12-19. Meanwhile, one in five kids aged 6-11 and one in 10 preschoolers aged 2-5 are obese.

"It's difficult to be optimistic at this point," said Dr. Frank Hu, chair of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. "The trend of obesity has been steadily increasing in both children and adults."

Obesity is medically defined as having a body-mass index of more than 30. Overweight and obese children have a higher risk to stay obese and childhood obesity is linked to a higher chance of early death in adulthood.

Amazon said it is creating more than 120,000 positions at its U.S. network of fulfillment centers, sortation centers and customer service sites for the holiday season and more than 1,500 of them will be in Connecticut, according to a local public relations agency. 

Last year, thousands of holiday positions were transitioned to regular, full-time roles after the holidays, according to Amazon, and the company expects to continue that trend this year. 

“We prepare year round for the holidays and we’re excited to hire for over 120,000 positions this season to help delight our customers,” said Dave Clark, Amazon senior vice president of Global Customer Fulfillment. “We look forward to welcoming back holiday employees who return year-after-year to Amazon and welcome new faces to the team, many of whom will continue on with regular, full-time roles with the company after the holidays.” 

In addition to here in Connecticut, Amazon positions are available in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin. 

Learn more about available positions and apply online at www.amazon.com/peakjobs. Learn more about Amazon jobs online here. 

Newington board members defended students rights to kneel during the national anthem at school sports events during a highly-charged board of education meeting. 

"Two Wednesdays ago roughly half of the volleyball team took a knee at the very end of the national anthem," Newington High School Student Council President Lukas Houle said.

Houle stood up for the students' right to kneel after he says it was called into question by a school board member on an online forum.

"This as it reads, in my opinion, insinuates that women’s on volleyball team should be punished," Houle said.

Another student, Yasmin Rincon, is on the volleyball team.

"I took a knee to protest police brutality against African Americans. Too many people have been killed unjustly and without reason," Ricon said. "Me being a Hispanic, black, Muslim woman, I am disgusted by the way minorities are treated."

The protest has sparked strong reactions.

"It’s just disrespectful to the flag," Steve Gagliardi in Newington said.

School board members said regardless of how anybody feels about the protest, the students have the right to kneel or stand.

"You have every right to do what you did. You don’t leave your schoolhouse rights at the door. You can’t be forced to do things like stand for the national anthem," a board member said.

Gov. Dannel Malloy will hold a news conference this morning to discuss the latest details of the State of Connecticut’s response and relief assistance to help Puerto Rico in the aftermath of two hurricanes that have devastated the island. 

Several men dedicated to service in Connecticut are preparing to use their skills to get clean water and other relief to Puerto Rico. 

They’re calling themselves Veterans 4 Puerto Rico and their mission is to bring clean water, communication and comfort to the island.

They represent the Army, Navy Marines Air Force, Coast Guard and the Meriden Fire Department.

They said the skills of preparedness, speed and strategic thinking learned in their respective services have equipped them for the relief mission.

All five men will head to Puerto Rico Friday and travel around the island, delivering care packages and other assistance in several towns.

“They’ve all been trained and ready to go and serve. At the end of the day, we’re there to help people,” said Ray Guasp, a Chester resident and Marine Corps veteran. “These are friends, coworkers, people I’ve known for a long time and some people I’ve just met.”

Guasp is Puerto Rican and has family on the island.

When he recognized the scope of the devastation done by the recent hurricanes, he decided to launch his own relief mission. Using his kitchen as a sort of tactical operations center, he brought together the group and began a fundraising effort to finance their efforts. In about a week’s time the group has raised approximately $20,000.

The centerpiece of the trip will be the water filtration systems that Veterans 4 Puerto Rico has purchased with the money they’ve raised. The systems can produce 250 gallons of potable water per hour — something Puerto Rico has struggled to provide residents since the storm. 

Each of the men is paying his own way to Puerto Rico so that all of the money they’ve raised can go directly to relief efforts on the ground.

You can learn more about Veterans 4 Puerto Rico at www.veterans4.org.

After Richard Dill finished his dentist appointment, he called his wife and her news had him rushing to her side. A vehicle had crashed into their Plymouth home for a second time in a three-year span.

"When I saw how close it came, I just hugged her. I just teared up," said Dill. "She was on the piano, in the far end of the living room and had her back to it all and heard this bang and turned around and saw this hole in our wall."

When Dill arrived, a corner of his home was gone after a vehicle careening off Route 6 struck it.

"[The driver] came up through the porch here. You can see the first column. He missed that. He took out the rest of the porch, took out the corner of the house right there, took out this side of the porch, and then ended up on that stump there. That's what stopped him," said Dill.

Had Dill been home, he could have been injured.

"There's a beam that came across the room into the chair I always sit in. If I'd been there it would have hit me in the chest. It just flew across the room. Our television set was there. It flew into the dining room, so he was moving pretty quick," said Dill.

Dill said he saw the driver walking around after the crash and the driver told him someone had cut him off.

Dill, a pastor at Bible Church in Waterbury, and his wife recently celebrated their 49th anniversary and have spent 41 of those years in their current home.

He said cars smash into a nearby telephone poll about once a year, with the most recent taking place a few weeks ago, but they never had any problems with cars hitting their home until recently.

This is now the second time in three years. The first one took out the porch and his wife was home then too. 

"She was right inside the second window, ironing, and all of a sudden heard a thud," said Dill. 

Even though the curve by their home has a speed limit of 25, Dill said drivers go a lot faster than that. 

"People just speed up this hill like crazy. You'll see it while you're standing here. They just think it's a raceway," said Dill. 

Dill said his wife was shaken by what happened on Thursday but she is OK. He said insurance will pay to repair the damage but something needs to change. 

"Somebody could have been killed. And it's going to happen sooner or later. It's going to happen," said Dill.

Dill said he plans to place boulders along the lawn to hopefully stop it from happening again.

You can get free coffee at Cumberland Farms stores on Fridays during the month of October. 

Free Coffee Fridays start today at the nearly 600 Cumberland Farms locations in the Northeast and Florida. 

Add an espresso shot, milk, cream, a pumpkin flavor shot or choose from a variety of other flavors, including hazelnut, caramel or classic French vanilla at no additional cost. 

Find locations online here. 

A suspicious fire is under investigation after a vacant building in Hartford caught fire early Friday morning. 

Crews responded to an old steel manufacturing facility at 367 Homestead Ave. just before 2 a.m. after fire started on the second floor. 

Because the 1916 building was built more than a century ago, it’s structurally unstable with stairs and parts of flooring missing, so crews were forced to fight the flames from outside. 

Investigators are looking into how the fire in the vacant property started and the city building inspector will determine what happens to the building.

The Virginia man accused of killing a Muslim teenage girl as she headed to a mosque during Ramadan appeared in court Friday, and her devastated parents interrupted court proceedings. 

"You killed my daughter!" Nabra Hassanen's father shouted. He stood on a courtroom bench and lunged at the accused, Darwin Martinez Torres, in a packed courtroom Friday afternoon. 

Hassanen's mother threw a shoe at Torres and screamed "I kill you!"

Deputies rushed into the packed courtroom to maintain order, shouting loudly. The judge and Torres were immediately escorted out for their safety. Other people, who shouted curse words at Torres, also were led out of the room.

Deputies pulled Hassanen's father out of the courtroom as he shouted.

After the outburst, Tores waived his right to a preliminary hearing.

More than 100 people -- many of them teenagers -- stood outside the courtroom holding posters with a photo of Hassanen on them and the words "Justice for Nabra."

Fairfax County deputies lined the entrance to the courthouse after the outbursts. Photos show more than 15 uniformed people standing in front of the doors.

Hassanen, who was 17, was beaten to death on June 18 as she returning to the All Dulles Area Muslim Society mosque in Sterling, Virginia. 

She was walking in a group of about 15 teenagers during a break from Ramadan prayers when a driver approached them and began arguing with one of the boys in the group, police said.

Torres chased the group in his car and drove onto a curb, police said. He got out of the car with a baseball bat and hit Hassanen with it, police said.

Then, he drove away with her in his car, attacked her again and dumped her body in a pond in Loudoun County.

Although the circumstances of Hassanen's death led many to speculate that the killing was a hate crime, police have said the slaying followed a case of road rage.

Torres, of Sterling is charged with second-degree murder. 

After the courtroom outbursts, only the parties of the case were allowed to watch the proceeding.

Stay with News4 for more details on this developing story.

Friday morning started out cold, with some temperatures in the 30s in the 40s.

Temperatures will rise to the mid-60s and scattered showers are possible Saturday.

That won’t stop 17,000 people from participating in the Hartford Marathon Saturday.

The race starts at 8 a.m. https://hartfordmarathon.com/ and there will be several road closures. You can check them here. 

A security task force has been working on the event to develop a safety plan for the benefit of thousands of runners and spectators.

The area around North Korea's nuclear test base may be destabilized after recent tremors and landslides, Reuters reported, and experts say it may not be used for tests much longer.

A small, magnitude 2.7 tremor took place near the Punggye-ri nuclear site, according to South Korea's weather agency, and it did not appear to be man-made, like two others since Pyongyang's powerful Sept. 3 nuclear test. That test was measured with a magnitude of 6.3.

"The explosion from the Sept. 3 test had such power that the existing tunnels within the underground testing site might have caved in," said Kim So-gu, head researcher at the Korea Seismological Institute. "I think the Punggye-ri region is now pretty saturated. If it goes ahead with another test in this area, it could risk radioactive pollution."

A Washington-based monitor of North Korea has also detected numerous landslides throughout the site, more than after any previous test.

A California couple survived the deadly wildfire raging around them by taking shelter in their neighbors' swimming pool, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Jan Pascoe, 65, and John Pascoe, 70, tried to flee their home in the hills above the city of Santa Rosa late Sunday as flames from one of 21 wildfires burning across the state closed in.

The Pascoes, trapped on the mountaintop, remembered their neighbors' pool and made the decision to take shelter in the "blackened, debris-filled" water. The retired couple told the Times they held each other for warmth in the cold water as houses burned down all around them and the flames inched closer.

"The heat was 'whoa'" John said.

In order to protect themselves from the smoke and embers, the Pascoes told the Times they held T-shirts over their faces while bobbing in and out of the water.

"I just kept going under," Jan explained. "And I kept saying, 'How long does it take for a house to burn down?'"

Meanwhile the couple’s two daughters endured several agonizing hours after losing contact with their parents Sunday night, shortly after calling to urge them to evacuate.

The pair said they first smelled smoke around 10 p.m. PT Sunday, when, according to Jan's phone, the fire was still 11 miles away and they had not received any official alerts informing residents about evacuations in their area.

They were awakened at midnight by a call from their older daughter, Zoe Giraudo, who urged them to "get out," and by then the wind had picked up and the flames were lurking outside.

They got in their cars, drove down their long driveway and were met with a "wall of flames," Jan told the Times.

They had called 911 before going in the pool and throughout the night, Jan thought someone would "come to get us." But no one came.

When they finally were able to get out six hours later, Jan told the Times the cellphone she left at the pool's edge had melted and everything around them was completely destroyed, including their home.

Sonoma County’s Emergency Manager Christopher Helgren is facing criticism over his decision not to activate the county’s wireless emergency alert system as the deadly Tubbs Fire grew.

Helgren told NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit that sending out a countywide alert to 500,000 residents would have done more harm than good because the area covered by such an alarm can't be restricted and far more people would have been alerted than were actually in harm's way, causing traffic jams and hampering emergency efforts.

Instead, Sonoma County used the Soco Alert system to send a robocall to 170,000 landlines and 15,000 residents who signed up to receive notifications through the system.

The series of fires in Northern California have destroyed 3,500 structures, and together make the deadliest week of wildfires in California history.

A man tried to sexually assault a young woman in Vernon Thursday night after following her off a CT Transit bus, according to police. 

Police officers responded to an apartment complex on Talcottville Road in Vernon just before 9 p.m. Thursday because a woman victim was yelling for help and she reported the attempted assault.

The victim was able to provide a description of the man and said he followed her off a CT Transit bus and attacked her from behind in a dark area near the apartment complex, police said. 

Police identified the suspect as 25-year-old Saige Yarde-Douglas, of Vernon, and said he allegedly told the victim he had a gun and didn’t want to hurt her. 

As the victim struggled and screamed, a resident of the apartment complex opened his window and shouted. That’s when Yard-Douglas ran, according to police. 

A Vernon police officer found him on a nearby street and said Yard-Douglas was not armed. 

A Vernon K-9 found an opened condom wrapper and condom in the direction Yard-Douglas fled. 

Yard-Douglas was charged with first-degree kidnapping with a firearm, first-degree attempted aggravated sexual assault, third-degree sexual assault, second-degree threatening, second-degree stalking and third-degree assault. 

He was held on $500,000 bond and will appear in court in Rockville today. 

Anyone with information should call the Vernon Police Department at 860-872-9126.

State police are investigating after an armed robbery in the Denny’s parking lot in Westbrook Friday morning. 

The armed robbery was at 11:30 a.m. Friday and troopers and state police K9s are searching in the area of the Interstate 95 South rest area in Madison. S 

Anyone with information is asked to call 911.

A Bristol man with who was previously convicted five times for driving under the influence is accused of impaired driving and going the wrong way on Route 72 in Plainville on Thursday evening. 

State police said they received several 911 calls reporting a driver going the wrong way on Route 72 West just after 8 p.m. 

Police looked at Department of Transportation cameras and said they showed the driver of a 1999 blue Ford Explorer with a trailer going the wrong way right before a crash. 

Richard Boughton, 47, of Bristol, failed field sobriety tests, according to state police, and was charged with operating while under suspension, operating a motor vehicle under the influence of drugs of alcohol and operating the wrong way on a one-way highway. 

Bond was set at $50,000. 

Police said Boughton was convicted of five prior DUIs. 

Groton police have been searching for a man who robbed the Chelsea Groton Bank in November 2016 and they have arrested a 36-year-old Framingham, Massachusetts man.

According to police, Kenneth J. Nelson entered the bank at 1319 Gold Star Highway around 11:32 a.m. on Nov. 15 and demanded money be placed in a bag. The employee complied and the man fled with an unknown amount of cash. No weapon was used or implied.

Massachusetts State Police found Nelson in Marlborough, Massachusetts on Wednesday and he was held in Massachusetts as a fugitive from justice. He waived extradition on Thursday.

Smoke and ash from the wildfires in Northern California are prompting severe air quality concerns around the Bay Area. Experts estimate the amount of pollution produced by the wildfires is equivalent to what’s emitted by all of California’s 35 million cars in a year.