A tree fell on a man behind his Colchester home Friday morning and LifeStar flew him to Hartford Hospital.

Officials from the Colchester Fire Department said the man was cutting a tree down on Settlers Lane when it fell on him and he used his belt as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding before emergency crews responded.

He used his cell phone to call 911.

First responders had to use saws to get to the area where the man was and it took 20 minutes to get the patient out of the woods.

He was conscious and alert and has injuries to his lower injuries, according to fire officials.

Storms are moving up the coast and will bring rain and thunder late this morning and afternoon.

While there will not be a lot of rain, it will be heavy at times.

The high temperature will be around 59 inland and 56 on the shoreline.

Police seized several venomous snakes from a Meriden home and said they found other snakes dead, including a king cobra.

Officials from the state and Meriden police went to a home on Westfield Road in Meriden Thursday after an advertisement was found on a snake forum about several venomous snakes that were for sale.

Officials from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection identified the suspect as 21-year-old Cameron DeFrances, of Meriden, and said he had posted photos on his social media account and listed the snakes for sale.

At the Meriden home, officials found seven snakes that are illegal in Connecticut, including a Gaboon Viper, a Forest cobra, two Egyptian banded cobras and two Monocled cobras. A reptile specialist was called in and transported the snakes to a secure facility for reptiles

A tree viper and a King cobra were also found deceased.

“DEEP takes these cases very seriously,” Colonel Kyle Overturf said in a statement. “The exploitation, importation and trafficking of illegally taken wildlife threatens species in our country and across the world. DEEP helped to pass regulations to prohibit the importation and possession of potentially dangerous animals, including venomous snakes, as a measure to protect the health and safety of our residents and to protect the welfare of these species.”

DeFrances was charged with nine counts of illegal possession of a category-two wild animal and reckless endangerment in the first degree.

DeFrances was released on a $1000 surety bond and is due in Meriden Superior Court on May 10.

A listed home phone number for DeFrances was out of service Friday, according to the Associated Press.

A Maine woman says accused cop killer John Williams was like a son to her and tells NBC10 Boston she is the one who found the body of slain Somerset County Cpl. Eugene Cole on Wednesday morning.

Kimberly Sirois says Williams lived with her at her Norridgewock home from 2003 until last Christmas, when she kicked him out for doing drugs. He moved in when he was in high school after a falling out with his parents.

"He was certainly struggling with addiction and it seemed to have gotten progressively worse since September," Sirois said.

Sirois, an education technician at Mill Stream Elementary School in Norridgewock, said the last few days have been a nightmare.

She said she woke up to the sound of helicopters overhead around 7 a.m. Wednesday and when she went outside she found Cole's body in her backyard and alerted police.

"As I lowered my eyes, I saw him," she said. "I asked him, 'Officer, are you OK?' and didn't get a response.

"I'm screaming, yelling, crying. I started screaming and waving my arms, and when I caught their attention, I said, 'I found your officer. He's in my yard.' They all came running over."

She said police later searched her property and found body armor and a gun in her car. They don't belong to her, and she said she's not sure if they belonged to Williams.

Sirois said she doesn't know what brought Cole to her property, and police have not commented on a motive.

"We have no idea what transpired," she said.

If Sirois could say one thing to Williams, she said she would tell him to turn himself in.

"This is as bad as having a child at war, it really is. You don't know what's happening and you don't know where they are," she said. "So I would just like him to turn himself in and come home."

Cole, 62, a 13-year veteran of the Somerset County Sheriff's Office, was gunned down between 1 and 2 a.m. Wednesday on Route 2 in Norridgewock, but police haven't said exactly where. Williams then allegedly stole Cole's marked cruiser and robbed a Cumberland Farms store on Waterville Road. He was last seen fleeing in the stolen cruiser.

The cruiser was found abandoned around 5 a.m. off of Martin Stream Road in Norridgewock. Investigators believe Williams then fled on foot, and has been at large ever since.

Williams is described as 5-foot-6 and 120 pounds with blue eyes. His hair is brown and unkempt and he has a full beard. He was last seen wearing a black beanie hat, a dark-colored zip-up jacket, gray pants and tan boots. His last known address is 16 Jones St. in Madison, and he has ties to both New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

Williams' former coworker spoke to WCSH-TV, saying he was likely the last person to see Williams before he allegedly killed Cole. He said Williams texted him around 1 a.m. on Wednesday asking him for a ride. The ex-coworker said he picked Williams up and dropped him off at a house in Norridgewock about 30 minutes later.

"I was close with him at the time, the short time I did know him, and I just don't feel like I'll see him alive again," the coworker said.

He added that Williams was upset about a court hearing he was scheduled to attend in Massachusetts on Wednesday morning. Williams was facing 10 years in prison on weapons charges.

According to police in Maine, Williams has a girlfriend, Kristina Pomerleau, 32, of Norridgewock. She has just been arrested on Saturday on drug charges and operating with a suspended license. Cole was there for Pomerleau's arrest, police said.

Nearly 200 officers from multiple agencies, including the FBI, have been working on the case and are being assisted by law enforcement in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The FBI has offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to Williams' arrest.

The search for Williams is now focused on the Martin Stream Road area. Friday's operations are expected to include door-to-door checks and searches of wooded areas.

Humboldt County pot farmer JD grew weed for decades before the once-illicit plant became legal in California, but ironically, legalization could spell the end of JD’s farming days.

He’s still growing illegally, without having obtained the necessary local and state licenses, but just until he saves enough money to make his escape and start a new life somewhere else, he says.

Count him among the majority of Emerald Triangle growers who watched legalization come to California but decided not to step out of the shadows. It’s also the reason he asked NBC Bay Area to call him by a nickname.

JD wanted to go legit, he says, but scrapped those plans when he realized the hefty price of complying with state and county regulations.

“I looked forward to doing it, but it ended up being a lot more expensive than you would think,” JD said.

On top of new fees and taxes levied by state and local agencies on growers opting to join the regulated market, it can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for growers like JD to bring their land up to code. With weed currently being sold at rock-bottom prices, running a small pot farm simply doesn’t pencil out anymore for a lot of growers in JD’s shoes.

“I grew because I love the plant,” JD said. “I make the best plants. That’s what I do, and there’s not a lot of money in that anymore. There’s a lot of money in making a lot of plants.”

JD is among the vast majority of California cannabis farmers who are still operating illegally or giving up their farms altogether. The California Growers Association estimates there are about 68,000 cannabis cultivators in the state. But data from the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), the agency responsible for licensing cultivators, shows only 8 percent of those estimated growers have even applied for temporary state licenses. Just 5 percent of growers have actually been granted one.

Some growers blame this on regulators, saying they haven’t done enough to ensure small farmers can survive in the new era of legal weed, leaving them no choice but to fold or take their chances on the black market. Others call it the price of regulation, an unfortunate but necessary consequence of bringing legitimacy to an industry that’s spent decades operating with the threat of criminal prosecution looming overhead. With regulation come taxes, fees and red tape – no different than what any small business owner in America has to deal with, they say.

County to county, it’s tough to pin down the percentage of growers who have opted to go the legal route. In Sonoma County, data show only about 4 percent of growers have initiated the process. Just to the North, in Mendocino County, roughly 18 percent of growers have submitted applications to the county. That’s using the low-end estimate of 5,000 growers in the county, but officials say the true number is probably closer to 10,000.

In Humboldt County, which has done comparatively well in bringing its growers into the fold, roughly 30 percent have at least begun the permitting process. That’s according to Humboldt County officials, who estimate the total number of growers in the county to be roughly 6,000. But some believe there are significantly more grow sites in the county, perhaps upwards of 15,000, which would mean considerably more pot farmers are operating illegally.

“There are some people who are rightly panicking right now because they recognize that the world they know is going to be different, and it may not work for them, and it’s unsettling,” said John Ford, planning director for Humboldt County.

Policing the black market is now largely out of the hands of law enforcement in Humboldt County and handled by Ford and his team, who use aerial images to spot illicit grows. Getting caught means significant penalties of $10,000 per day for each violation. Ford says the system has had more success at shutting down illegal grows than the law enforcement raids of old.

“The Sheriff’s Office could hit 15 to 20 sites in a year,” Ford said. “Now we can do that in a week. When aerial photography is so available, and you can look down and see exactly where they’re at and just send a letter from a desktop, it changes the engagement significantly.”

Ford’s team has already sent out about 100 letters to properties with illicit grows and expects to send out more than 500 by the end of the summer. He knows many growers in the county will struggle to survive on the regulated market, and he says the county is making every effort to engage small farmers in the process. But he believes removing the black market from the equation is what’s best for the county.

“We do want the cannabis industry to be successful, and the way it’s successful is that it has a level playing field and that everyone is complying with the same requirements,” Ford said.

Humboldt County grower Scott Davies gives Ford a lot of credit for his work trying to bring cannabis cultivators into the regulated market. Davies came to Humboldt County in the 1980s. He fell in love and hasn’t left since. Now, he runs Winterbourne Farms, tucked up against the Mattole River in a remote part of the county. He’s a fierce advocate of regulating the industry and moving beyond prohibition and was among the first growers in county to begin the permitting process.

Davies says he spent years looking for the perfect property for growing cannabis on the regulated market, believing legalization was all but inevitable.

“We made the decision to focus our cultivation on a piece of property that would be perfect for any type of agriculture endeavor,” he said. “Flat, the ability to store water, good access to sunshine for the plants, but also for the solar system that powers the farm.”

Davies, who also co-owns the Humboldt Legends distribution company, understands the majority of growers in the county, many of whom have been growing for decades, are simply not going to make it. He feels for them but says a bit more foresight could have likely saved some growers from the precarious positions they now find themselves in.

“I think some of the people didn’t prepare as well as they should have, and now they are suffering,” he said.

But Davies said it also comes down to size. Davies said Winterbourne Farms is about the smallest size operation that can make it on the regulated market without a lot of additional stress.

“I think 20,000 square feet is just over the kind of cutoff that makes the most economic sense for people to go into the permit path,” he said.

By comparison, JD’s grow is just a fraction of the size of Winterbourne Farms.

Davies acknowledges the steep price of coming into compliance for growers, but chooses to view the cost as a long-term investment in his business. He says the process has cost him upwards of half a million dollars so far.

“That’s significant, it really is,” Davies said. “But that money comes back in increased property value and in the business that can continue on into the future. So it’s a thoughtful investment for the future for a long-term play.”

He understands he’ll now be competing with some of his neighbors who choose to remain on the black market but isn’t overly concerned as long as their illicit weed is only being sold out of state.

“My expectation is that the black market won’t go away but that I won’t have to compete with the black market in the retail, regulated channel,” he said.

Keeping black market pot out of the regulated market is now up to state regulators like Lori Ajax, Chief of the Bureau of Cannabis Control.

She says they are trying to balance the needs of farmers while still maintaining the regulations she says are in the best interests of the industry, consumers, and the environment.

“I think it’s our job, along with local jurisdictions, to not create a situation where the black market is thriving,” Ajax said.

It’s still early in the process, and Ajax says she expects more growers to come onboard in the coming months. She says the bureau, along with the state’s public health department – and CDFA, which regulates cultivators – are fine-tuning the rules right now.

“We’re working on our final regulations that all three licensing authorities will be releasing in the next couple months to address these issues that aren’t working and to find ways we can make sure cultivators, manufacturers, distributors and retailers will be successful.”

Growers committed to going legit tell NBC Bay Area they look forward to ending cannabis prohibition and ushering in a new era of legitimacy and stability to the industry, despite any potential challenges and growing pains. Regulation, they say, helps protect the environment from degradation, lets consumers know where their pot was grown and that it’s free from mold and pesticides, and ends the criminalization of those in the industry.

But no matter how hard regulators work to bring cultivators into the legal market, state data show the California market simply can’t support everybody. According to a recent report by the California Department of Finance, Californians consumes only about 20 percent of the 13.5 million pounds of pot the state’s growers produce each year. The report estimates about 11 million pounds is shipped out of state, which is still currently illegal under state and federal law.

So, by all accounts, the state’s illicit cannabis market is here to stay. But the reasons growers remain in the shadows can be quite different.

For some farmers, like JD, the decision to grow on the black market comes down to economics. It can be too costly to come into compliance without access to a boatload of capital. Larger growers, often backed by investors with deep pockets, can afford to hire consultants and lawyers to help them navigate the licensing process. They can also withstand the new fees and taxes that growers have to hand over to a handful of different government agencies.

Another faction of growers never intended to join the legal market at all, some Emerald Triangle cultivators say. Some don’t trust the government and have significant doubts about handing over their personal information to local and state authorities. Many others will be tempted by the significantly higher prices California weed sells for out of state.

“Many of the illicit growers are addicted to the cash, and that’s something that’s hard to give up,” JD said.

And then there are growers who find themselves on the black market simply because of geography. Despite being legal at the state level, local control provisions allow cities and counties to ban cannabis cultivation, so anyone growing in those areas is operating illicitly.

Just five months into California’s legal pot journey, it’s probably too soon to say for sure just how many of the state’s cannabis farmers are going to survive. The coming months should be telling. In the meantime, growers face a lot of uncertainty, both on the legal market, and the illicit one.

“There’s a lot of us that are giving it a last ditch effort,” JD said. “And then there are those of us that are getting out.”

If you have a tip for the Investigative Unit email theunit@nbcbayarea.com. Follow Liz on Facebook and Twitter. 

Police are investigating after a BB hit a school bus at New London High School and shattered a window Thursday afternoon. 

Six people, including the driver, were on the bus on school property when a BB coming from a moving vehicle hit the back window of the bus, according to police. 

Police said they were contacted around 2:30 p.m. Thursday and said no injuries were reported. 

The investigation is ongoing. Police said they have identified the people involved and arrests are pending.

Some high school students were involved and the school administration has worked closely with the New London Police Department to resolve the matter, according to a statement from New London Public School.

Police believe this was an isolated event and said there are no indications that would lead police to believe that students, staff or the school are not safe.

Craig Wooster was awakened just before 5:30 a.m. more than six months ago when his cellphone rang with news of the fires that had begun racing through California’s Wine Country, and that would eventually kill more than 40 people, destroy more than 8,500 buildings and leave thousands without power.

The general contractor of a small, freestanding grid or microgrid that serves the vineyards and winery at Stone Edge Farm in Sonoma County, he gave instructions that it be untethered from the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. so that it could continue to produce power to pump water from wells for the irrigation system if the utility went out.

For the next 10 days, while the farm was evacuated, it became a showcase of resiliency as the staff operated the microgrid remotely.

“The microgrid did exactly what it was designed to do,” Wooster said. “It operated even without us doing anything to make it work.”

Now Wooster and Stone Edge Farm's owners, Mac and Leslie McQuown, are taking lessons learned from the fires to improve the microgrid and to encourage a different kind of rebuilding in the nearby Coffey Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa, which was devastated. Following the fires, the earthquake in Napa Valley four years ago and Hurricanes Irma and Maria last year that destroyed much of Puerto Rico and flooded Houston and southern Florida, Wooster predicted new interest in energy sources that can withstand natural disasters.

“The fire taught us some things that I do not think we would have designed into our testing scheme because we never thought about them,” Wooster said. “That gave us a real world scenario and in a lot of ways made us think more outside the box.”

Mac McQuown is former banker who led a team at Wells Fargo in San Francisco that created the first stock index fund, Leslie McQuown is a designer, and together they co-founded the 16-acre Stone Edge Farm Estate Vineyards and Winery in 1995. The farm produces Bordeaux-style wines, heirloom vegetables, grapes and olive oil, among other products. 

From the start they were determined to conserve water and reduce their carbon footprint, installing arrays of solar panels, and they are now exploring how far below zero carbon emissions they can go.

The farm's microgrid was designed almost five years ago as a laboratory, Wooster said. It is meant to be a prototype, an experiment, overbuilt to test different components and identify trade-offs, purposely retrofitted and mostly buried underground. It is open source with no restrictions on the use of its discoveries. It buys equipment from start-ups and has employed dozens of interns. Wooster wouldn't say how much they've spent.

The staff is working with institutions across the world, including the California College of the Arts to install microgrids. 

Its goal? "The ability to provide the energy to be carbon neutral essentially," said the college's president, Stephen Beal. 

The college is focused on fine arts, design and architecture and impresses upon its 2,000 students the importance of sustainability, he said. It is expanding its campus in San Francisco.

"Creating a microgrid became the process or the pathway through which we could attempt to meet the goal of carbon neutrality," he said.

Amory Lovins, a cofounder and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, which is dedicated to sustainability research, noted that the microgrid was able to run from a variety of sources.

"The microgrid artfully combines a very broad range of technologies to demonstrate the many diverse technical options and how they play together," he said. 

The microgrid itself is made up of, among other parts, batteries, a microturbine, inverters that connect or isolate the microgrid to the utility grid, and an electrolyzer and a hydrogen storage and fueling station.

When its seven utility meters are disconnected from the utility grid, they are connected together on a microgrid trunk line and operate in what is called island mode. One unique feature: It is capable of exporting energy to the utility grid even if it is otherwise in island mode.

Last fall, despite the fire’s ash and smoke the microgrid produced half of the energy it normally would produce — but because there was no one at the farm using the power it was enough to threaten to overwhelm the batteries, Wooster said. Normally when the batteries are fully charged, the farm turns on its hydrogen electrolyzer, makes gaseous hydrogen, stores it and uses it to power the cars on the farm, he said. But because he did not want to introduce a flammable agent during the fire, he ordered the electrolyzer not be used.

Over the last six months, the staff has working to try to develop more control over the individual parts, much the way one can control the volume of a radio. They believe they have a solution that they will be testing over the next few months.

“This is really a fundamental building block of microgrids if we can get this to work,” Wooster said. “It’s not a trivial matter, it’s very sophisticated.”

“That is a light year leap for microgrid development,” he said.

Among the batteries used in the microgrid are lithium ferrous phosphate ones produced by an Ojai, California-based company, SimpliPhi Power.

"What we’re able to prove out and indeed this is happening all over the world that renewables coupled with batteries in a distributed local architecture are more cost effective, create more resilience and more security than top down centralized infrastructure," said Catherine Von Burg.

Another lesson from the fires, according to Wooster: The country must move rapidly to install microgrids in hospitals, fire stations, stations and other critical infrastructure so that they operate independently of the utility grid.

Lovins would add to that all gasoline and diesel filling stations, all of which should be equipped with solar panels and batteries to provide dedicated power to pump fuel during power failures. 

A committee has been formed to find a way to rebuild the Coffey Park neighborhood that in Wooster’s words is more focused on 2030 than 1972, a project that is moving forward. The utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., is participating but residents must still organize, he said.

For the future, components of microgrids must be built and ready to ship when a natural disaster occurs, Wooster said.

“One of the bigger world discussions at the moment is how to focus on the next disaster and be ready to move,” he said.

The Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. in 2016 had deeper ties to the Kremlin than previously disclosed and worked with Russia's chief legal office, according to emails obtained by NBC News.

The emails the Dossier organization said it was sent suggest Natalia Veselnitskaya worked closely with an official at the office of Russia's prosecutor-general to impede an investigation by the U.S Justice Department into a Russian businessman.

The emails suggest Veselnitskaya was involved in coordinating a government response to the U.S. case, NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel reported.

Click here to watch a segment of Veselnitskaya's interview with Engel on MSNBC.

Dossier is an arm of tycoon and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Veselnitskaya has denied having connections to the Kremlin since her meeting with then-candidate Donald Trump's son, son-in-law and campaign chairman at Trump Tower. The encounter took place after Donald Trump Jr. was told she had potentially incriminating information about Trump's election opponent, Hillary Clinton.

When asked by Engel if the emails suggest that she tried to obstruct justice, Veselnitskaya replied: "What obstruction? What are you talking about? ... I want to have it on the record."

Veselnitskaya is a well-connected Moscow lawyer, but the extent of her government ties has been unclear since she was identified as a participant in the 2016 Trump Tower meeting. 

Veselnitskaya's full interview airs Friday at 9 p.m. ET on "On Assignment With Richard Engel."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A call reporting an armed intruder at The Hospital of Central Connecticut in New Britain Friday turned out to be false, according to hospital officials. 

A statement from Hartford Health Care said the police responded to the hospital campus at 11 a.m. after a call was made from outside the hospital about an armed intruder on the campus. 

Police searched the area and determined that the alleged threat was false, then they identified and located the suspected caller, according to the hospital. 

#MeToo and Time’s Up got their names and momentum last year after allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein unleashed a tidal wave of sexual harassment and assault accusations, stretching from Hollywood to Washington.

But the movements likely wouldn’t exist without women first speaking out about their experiences with Bill Cosby – and it’s equally possible his conviction Thursday on sexual assault charges stems at least in part from the #MeToo/Time’s Up era his case helped wrought. 

The once-beloved star of “The Cosby Show” now faces up to 30 years in prison, caught in a Catch-22 of his own making.

Cosby’s long run as the wise and wisecracking “America’s Dad” began its slow death march in 2014 when Hannibal Buress, during a comedy routine, branded him a rapist. The once-unthinkable attack spurred dozens of women to come forward with sexual assault allegations against Cosby, with some dating to the 1960s.

Among the accusers was Andrea Constand, a Temple University employee who charged Cosby drugged and molested her in his Philadelphia-area home in 2004. Cosby contended their encounter was consensual.

His first trial ended in a hung jury last June, less than three months before The New York Times and The New Yorker published what turned out to be Pulitzer Prize-winning – and game changing – reports about Weinstein.

The movie producer didn’t pack anywhere near the household-name status of Cosby. But the accounts sounded familiar: An entertainment giant uses his power to victimize numerous women who fear they’ll never be believed.

The Weinstein stories spurred many more accounts of lewd behavior and far worse, allegedly perpetrated by major and not-so-major figures in the entertainment and news media, as well as in politics. This all unfolded in the shadow of the election of a president once caught on tape crudely bragging about sexually accosting women at will, and whose inauguration sparked massive marches by women in the U.S. and beyond.

But there seems little doubt the allegations against Cosby – shocking in their target, their numbers and, above all, in their details – changed public perceptions, not only of him, but of the culture of sexism, sexual assault and secrecy embedded in all kinds of institutions.

Cosby’s alleged actions were not only abhorrent, but far from an aberration. If Bill Cosby was capable of some of the worst of human behavior, then, it seemed, nothing was out of the realm of possibility.

Even before Thursday’s verdict, it was impossible to listen the same way to Cosby’s comic stories of growing up poor in Philadelphia with his brother Russell or his imagined conversation between God and Noah. Ditto for his TV triumphs, from his “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids” of 1970s cartoon junkyard fame to his stint as loving dad and doctor Cliff Huxtable on “The Cosby Show,” TV’s top program for five seasons in the 1980s.

His previous image as a genial entertainment icon stands at odds not only with his conviction, but with the scene of a nearly blind 80-year-old man cursing a prosecutor in court Thursday during a dispute over whether he’s a flight risk.

Cosby’s legacy is now a product of his crimes – a potential death in prison for a pioneering comedian whose worst actions helped galvanize the movement that sealed his fate.

Hester is Director of News Products and Projects at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He is also the author of "Raising a Beatle Baby: How John, Paul, George and Ringo Helped us Come Together as a Family." Follow him on Twitter.

Mark Barden and Nicole Hockley, who became national advocates for gun control after losing their children in the Sandy Hook massacre, have opted against running for Congress.

Barden and Hockley are the co-founders of Sandy Hook Promise, a non-profit organization focused on preventing gun violence and advocating for gun control at the state and national levels. Supporters had suggested either one of them run for Connecticut's Fifth District seat.

“Having both lost children in the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy, we feel compelled to be with our surviving children during their high school years – we know all too well how precious and short time with family can be,” they said in a joint statement.

Barden’s son Daniel and Hockley’s son Dylan were both killed in the Newtown shooting.

The statement also said that being considered an honor, and that they would not rule out running for Congress in the future. For now, they will continue their work with Sandy Hook Promise.

“We started this journey together, and right now, we feel we can have more of an impact by seeing just how far we can go together,” the statement said.

Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty, a Democrat, currently holds the seat. On April 2, Esty announced she would not run for re-election amid criticism and pressure to resign after she admitted to keeping her former chief of staff on after he was accused of threatening another female staff member.

Shake Shack founder and chairman Danny Meyer, who lived in Hartford in the late 1970s, says his Hartford experience influenced his business philosophy.

“My heart is here,” said the Trinity College alum and trustee, who has launched fine dining restaurants and other Shake Shacks around the world.

Meyer said moving from St. Louis to Hartford in the late 1970s inspired him to explore the city’s economically depressed, but ethnically vibrant neighborhoods.

“We actually would go to restaurants in neighborhoods because we could explore ethnic cooking. I just was never afraid, but I will say the economic divide was just as apparent then as it is right now.”

Seeing the way good food was successful in drawing him and his classmates off the Trinity College Campus later encouraged him to try launching fine-dining restaurants in what were formerly some of Manhattan’s struggling areas.

“No one was going to Union Square. It was a dangerous place - it was a drug-ridden park in 1985. No one was going to Madison Square Park,” Meyer said.

Today, his restaurants Union Square Café and Shake Shack are credited with helping those areas turn around for the better, and he hopes Shake Shack will also be an instrument for change in the communities where they open. Meyer said the chain is careful to source products from local businesses, and they work with local partners to hire employees from disadvantaged backgrounds. Five of the West Hartford location’s new employees come from the Kitchen at Billing’s Forge, a non-profit job training program based in Hartford’s Frog’s Hollow neighborhood.

Long before Shake Shack was looking at a Hartford county location, Meyer said he was impressed by the program at Billing’s Forge and the food at their fine-dining restaurant, Firebox.

“I think restaurants like this give courage to other businesses and it takes acts of courage, many acts of courage, for neighborhoods to change,” he said.

While a freshman at Trinity College majoring in political science, Meyer interned with the state legislature. He said he is particularly mindful of the choice Shake Shack, a publicly-traded company, made in deciding to open in West Hartford instead of Hartford. UConn’s new downtown campus, and recent efforts by Trinity College to bring more of their students downtown, Meyer said are a sign that things are looking up for the troubled city. If the West Hartford location proves successful, he said he’ll set his sights on opening a Shake Shack in downtown Hartford.

When 5-year-old Daniella Cireillo waves to the superheroes out the hospital window, she forgets she’s hooked up to a machine and getting a blood transfusion.

“She just has a transfusion a week ago, so for her to come again and have this distract her a little bit, it’s really great,” said her mother, Nicole Cireillo.

Everyone, including the doctors and the nurses, dressed as superheroes for Superhero Day at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center.

“It’s important to remind ourselves and our families that even though our kids, whatever their going through, if their sick, if their inpatient, that they’re still kids,” said Connecticut Children’s Medical Center’s Kelsea Portner.

Hartford police officers paid a visit wearing masks and capes.

“All of the enrichment that we do. All of the fun activities we do,” Portner said. “That helps heal the children just as much as the medicine does.”

Out of the gate, Michael Gualtieri will tell you exactly where you’ll find his horse My Boy Jack.

“He will always be in the back of the pack,” Gualtieri said.

The 3-year-old is now a Kentucky Derby contender, making Gualtieri, the president of ProCourier in West Hartford, a first-time Derby horse owner.

“I don't think it’s still hit me properly,” Gualtieri said.

The West Hartford business owner and three of his business buds have owned a stable for years.

“I had a casual interest just enough to be dangerous,” Gualtieri said.

It wasn’t until buying My Boy Jack in 2016 that the interest became an investment.

The four friends bought the horse for just $5,000 apiece. His win at the Stone Street Lexington just weeks ago was enough to take him to the Derby next week.

“I try not to think too much,” Gualtieri said.

While Gualtieri tries not to look at the odds, he can’t help but smile when the thinks of the $20,000 horse that could take the more than a million dollar prize.

“You wouldn't look at him and say he's a champion, he's got the heart of a champion, he's good,” Gualtieri said.

You can watch My Boy Jack in the Run for the Roses Saturday, May 5 on NBC Connecticut.

On Friday hundreds of middle school students from New Britain got to spend the day in college at Central Connecticut State University as part of an event meant to show them the value of higher education and a taste of the college experience.

“Being here today is such a unique experience. It’s wonderful really,” said Itati Serrano, an eighth-grader. “Going to college is so important and this campus is beautiful.”

Nelba Marquez-Greene founded the Ana Grace Project and started the, “Finish the Race” event for her daughter who was killed in the Sandy Hook Shooting.

“We’ve got 600 kids and their staff and their teachers all coming today to participate in the third annual 'Finish the Race' which is a program that we have here at the CCSU AGP with the school district of New Britain,” Marquez-Greene explained.

The students learned about the value of an education and got the chance to interact with college students.

“I think for some kids who may not get an introduction to college any other way, it’s the first time seeing themselves on campus saying hey this could be for me and that’s what we want,” Marquez-Greene said.

Each student even got a pair of new sneakers from Fleet Feet.

“The coolest thing about today is, it’s all about love,” said Mckala Linbo, a New Britain student.

Former Consumer Protection Commissioner, Connecticut Democratic Party leader, and State Senator Jonathan Harris announced he would drop his bid for governor, Friday, and threw his support to businessman Ned Lamont.

The move provides another shot of momentum to Lamont’s campaign, as the Connecticut Democratic Party is three weeks away from its nominating convention in Hartford.

“It is with great pride today that I endorse Ned and offer my help to him to be the next governor of Connecticut,” Harris told reporters during a press conference at the Connecticut State Capitol.

The discussions between Harris and Lamont over the endorsement appear to have been brief, and Harris noted that the two have spoken at length over the past few months as they have intended numerous forums across Connecticut.

The support for Lamont, Harris hopes, sends a message to other candidates looking to keep Connecticut’s governor’s office in Democratic hands for the next four years.

“I think we need to become united now and focus on winning in November and we want to win not just to win, but we want to win because we want to govern,” Harris said. “We have to keep this state blue. We cannot become a red right to work state. That’s not the direction we want to go in.”

By picking up Harris’ support, it provides a link from Lamont to the administration of Gov. Dannel Malloy, something Lamont said does not scare him.

“Look, Dan Malloy inherited a mess and I’m not sitting around blaming Dan Malloy. I’m not talking about where we’ve been. I’m talking about where we’re going and I think I’m the candidate who gives us the best chance to talk about where we’re going.”

The race for governor appears to be thinning before candidates arrive at the Democrats’ convention next month. Multiple sources within the state Democratic establishment have told NBC Connecticut that they view the race as being a three-way-contest among Lamont, former Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, and Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim.

Each could conceivably emerge with the requisite 15 percent of committed delegates to secure access on the August primary ballot.

Ganim said in a statement of Harris leaving the race to endorse Lamont, “I like Jonathan and wish him well. But the withdrawal of Jonathan Harris from the governor’s race does not fundamentally change this race.”

Bysiewicz also released a statement, saying, “I thank Jonathan for contributing important ideas to these discussions as well as for his long service as an elected official, commissioner and Democratic Party executive director.”

Tracy Mazerolle was excited to get her new bright orange Subaru. But her excitement quickly turned to disappointment after driving her brand new vehicle off the lot and soon discovering a defect.

Mazerolle said she’s owned Subaru vehicles in the past and wanted an upgrade.

“I was very, very happy with that Forester. So, I knew the next vehicle was probably going to be a Subaru,” said Mazerolle.

The Middletown resident spent $31,000 on a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek.

“Before I made my first payment on it, I noticed some chips on the rear passenger side door,” said Mazerolle.

Mazerolle didn’t think much of it, until she started noticing more paint chips.

“I’ve never seen this before on anyone’s vehicle before and I figured this has to be a defect in the paint,” she said.

Mazerolle returned the car to the dealership and a sales associate told her about the paint protection on her warranty with Subaru of America.

They advised her to contact the company. She did so right away.

“They asked me to bring it back to my dealership and have the body shop specialist take some photos and submit it for the claim with Subaru of America,” said Mazerolle.

Mazerolle said Subaru of America denied her claim stating the chipping is the result of outside debris and offered to pay the comprehensive deductible on her car insurance.

“I was not willing to do that. That’s not what that coverage is for,” said Mazerolle.

A Subaru representative instructed her to take the vehicle to an authorized Subaru body shop of her choice.

“The specialist there confirmed to me, it is bad paint. It’s a manufacturer defect and he said he seen that before,” said Mazerolle.

Mazerolle said the tech told her it would take tens of thousands of dollars to repair it. If not, the car would start to rust over time.

“I never expected to run into this with a brand new vehicle,” added Mazerolle.

Having exhausted all of her options, Mazerolle called NBC Connecticut Responds in hopes of not losing the $31,000 she paid for the vehicle.

We reached out to Subaru of America on Mazerolle’s behalf.

The end result - a brand new 2018 Subaru Crosstrek!

Subaru of America told us in a statement:

“We are pleased that we were able to find a solution for the customer in this situation. While we believe that the paint issues were caused by outside influences such as road debris, we wanted to make sure the customer was satisfied with their new Subaru vehicle.”

So, rather than trying to fix the paint problem, Mazerolle got a new car.

“NBC’s involvement definitely made a big difference. It made them realize I wasn’t going to give up on this issue. So, it was very helpful to have the Responds team respond,” Mazerolle said.

Linda McMahon will be taking Tom Brokaw’s place as the graduation speaker for Sacred Heart University in the wake of allegations that the former NBC News anchor tried to kiss and grope an NBC News correspondent in the 1990s.

Sacred Heart University President John Petillo provided NBC Connecticut with the statement he sent to the university community and it says Brokaw did not want to distract from “the intended and most important focus of the day - our graduating students and their families” and withdrew as the speaker for the undergraduate commencement, which takes place on Saturday, May 12.

The allegations against Brokaw come from Linda Vester, a former NBC News correspondent. She told The Washington Post and Variety that Brokaw made unwanted advances toward her twice, in 1994 and 1995, and tried to kiss and grope her.

Brokaw’s statement, which was released through NBC News, says: “I met with Linda Vester on two occasions, both at her request, 23 years ago because she wanted advice with respect to her career at NBC. The meetings were brief, cordial and appropriate, and despite Linda's allegations, I made no romantic overtures towards her at that time or any other.”

Brokaw retired from his positions of anchor and managing editor of "Nightly News" in 2004 and is now a special correspondent.

In a letter to colleagues, Brokaw flatly denied Vester's allegations.

"She often sought me out for informal meetings, including the one she describes in her New York hotel room. I should not have gone but I emphatically did not verbally and physically attack her and suggest an affair in language right out of pulp fiction," Brokaw wrote.

He also described an encounter at Vester's apartment.

"As I remember, she was at one end of a sofa, I was at the other. It was late and I had been up for 24 hours. As I got up to leave I may have leaned over for a perfunctory goodnight kiss but my memory is that it happened at the door - on the cheek. No clenching her neck. That move she so vividly describes is NOT WHO I AM. Not in high school, college or thereafter," the letter read.

Sacred Heart announced Friday Brokaw's decision to bow out of the commencement ceremony.

“This morning Tom Brokaw informed us of his decision to withdraw as our undergraduate commencement speaker. Given events in the news, Mr. Brokaw did not want to distract from the intended and most important focus of the day - our graduating students and their families,” Petillo said in his statement to the university community.

McMahon, the U.S. Small Business Administration administrator and a member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet, will be now speaking to the students at graduation.

“We respect and agree with Mr. Brokaw’s decision, and I am delighted to announce that the Honorable Linda McMahon, member of the President’s Cabinet and former SHU trustee, will be our keynote speaker this year,” the statement from Petillo goes on to say.

McMahon, a Connecticut resident and one of the founders of World Wrestling Entertainment, is a former Sacred Heart University trustee who will be receiving an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, degree.

Tuition at all of Connecticut’s state colleges universities and community colleges could be going up in a big way if state lawmakers in Hartford don’t step in, according to the college system’s president.

A plan floated late last year by Connecticut State Colleges & Universities President Mark Ojakian would have merged all of Connecticut community colleges into one large school, a plan Ojakian said would save more than $20 million. But that plan has been rejected by the accreditation board, and now Ojakian says it’s up to state lawmakers to make sure tuition does not skyrocket.

“Most of us come here because it is affordable,” said Capital Community College student Natalie Langlaise.

Langlaise said part of the reason she’ll earn an associates degree from Capital Community College this spring is because her tuition here was never too high. She’s deeply disturbed by the possibility of tuition soon soaring at schools like her own.

“It would affect my entire life, I would say,” she told NBC Connecticut. ”The idea that the cost of education is going up, it just doesn’t sit well with the students,” she added.

In a letter to lawmakers, President Ojakian said tuition at Capital and all of Connecticut’s community colleges could more than double from about $4,000 a year to $10,000, and four-year colleges could increase by 50 percent if state lawmakers don’t act to help close budget shortfalls with something other than tuition increases.

“In two years we’re going to be even further in the whole than we had projected,” Oakian said.

Ojakian said he sent the letter to make it clear to the state that now that the proposal to save money by merging schools is stalled, leaders have to act to keep the state’s colleges afloat.

“It was meant to say to them, if you want to have a public higher education system, that’s affordable and accessible and doesn’t leave any student behind, then we need your help,” Ojakian said.

Despite the failure of the consolidation plan, Ojakian said keeping all of Connecticut’s community colleges open is a priority, But while they continue to push lawmakers for more funding, they’ll also circle back with the accreditors to see if there’s an acceptable way to consolidate.