A Plainfield mom is furious after she said her son, who is diagnosed with ADHD, was given a so-called “award” by his teacher for getting distracted often.

NBC Connecticut spoke exclusively to Tera Cooper who said she’s confused why that teacher at Plainfield Central School would think it’s funny to give something like this to her 13-year-old son, Derek.

The certificate is titled “#ADDAward” and reads “Most likely to be distracted by…look something shiny!” It has a zombie being held up by a balloon and a little gold ribbon that says “good work.”

“He had tears in his eyes. He’s embarrassed because he had to accept it in front of his entire class,” Cooper said.

While she never met the teacher, Cooper said the school and the teacher know about Derek’s ADHD.

“He is on a 504 plan at the school, so she is aware of it. I don’t know if she thought it was funny but it’s not funny. She’s the teacher. It’s supposed to be a safe place,” Cooper said.

In a statement sent to NBC Connecticut on Monday, Principal Scott Gagnon said he was made aware of the incident Friday evening and met with the seventh grader’s parents at the school Saturday morning.

He said, in part, “At that time, parents were assured that, along with our central office administration, this matter would be handled promptly as we are acting on good faith in the interest of the student and his family.”

Plainfield Public Schools Superintendent Kenneth Di Pietro said in an email Wednesday that he will not comment until the investigation process in completed since this is being addressed as a personnel issue.

But in a statement sent when NBC Connecticut first reached out to him on Monday, Di Pietro wrote in part, “Our effort to respond immediately and follow up is certainly evidence that we as a district and personally take such matters seriously.”

Cooper said she is going to talk to lawyer about potentially taking legal action.

“Hopefully make change. Make the administration more involved in what teachers are doing and protect the students from having to deal with something like this in the future,” she said.

Derek did receive two other awards from the same teacher, Cooper added. One for being the most improved in social studies and the other, titled “#BermudaTriangle” that reads “Most likely to borrow stuff and it never coming back!” The certificates have a picture of a skeleton and a zombie respectively and the same “good work” ribbon.

Cooper said Derek told her that a couple of other students received the ADD “award”, too. Reporter Heather Burian emailed Principal Gagnon inquiring about it, but did not hear back by the time this story aired.

NBC Connecticut also reached out by email to every member of the Plainfield Public Schools Board of Education for comment but did not hear back.

Two Connecticut moms, runners and breast cancer survivors are teaming up to raise money for the Yale-New Haven Smilow Cancer Hospital.

“I was actually six months pregnant with my youngest son Isaiah when I initially found a lump,” Lynsey Eno told NBC Connecticut.

It was only after the cancer came back a second time that Eno sought treatment at Smilow.

“And at that point, I realized I need somebody who specializes in the type of cancer that I had,” she said.

In September, Eno, who has run marathons, will hop on a bike for her first Closer to Free Ride.

“My main reason for wanting to do it is a thank you to Smilow,” Lynsey said. “It has been an amazing experience.”

Through a Facebook group, Lynsey connected with Lara Hajek.

“I followed her on Facebook when she was diagnosed and just watching her journey and she inspired me,” Hajek said.

A year ago, NBC Connecticut profiled Lara’s daughter Sierra before she rode last September to honor her mom while she went through breast cancer treatment at Smilow.

“Proud mom moment,” Lara said, “because I’m watching her cross that finish line with her hands up, with the thumbs up it was like, very, very extremely proud of her.”

At a fundraiser for her team in Madison last year, Lara and Lynsey finally met.

“And she walked in and I’m going oh my gosh that’s Lynsey,” Hajek said, “she’s a celebrity in my eyes, because of what she had been through.”

Now, Lynsey is a member of Team Lara’s Army.

“It really didn’t take much convincing to get me to join her team,” Lynsey said.

Lynsey proudly wears hear survivor jersey, but it comes with mixed emotions because this past April doctors told her the cancer returned and spread to her skin.

“It’s emotional I won’t lie,” she said. “Especially with my latest diagnosis being stage four. I have a hard time with the word survivor because I’m still actively going through treatment but I have to remind myself that I’ve survived a lot of different very aggressive treatments and for that I want people to know that I am a survivor.”

NBC Connecticut is a proud media sponsor of the 8th Closer to Free Ride that raises millions of dollars for research and patient care.

The ride begins Saturday, September 8 at the Yale Bowl.

Students will see security changes at New Britain High this fall.

“Day one next school year, students will be required to swipe in the door when they come to school,” Robert Smedley Director of Facilities and Security at New Britain High School told NBC Connecticut.

Officials are working on tighter controls on who is coming into New Britain High School. The new security measures are coming this fall. In a couple weeks, inside the main entrance, there will be six machines set up so students can swipe a card right into class.

Angel de Los Santos will be a senior in the fall. He supports the idea.

“If it promotes safety, so I’m all for it!”

Smedley, who is also a city alderman, recently visited Brooklyn Technical High School in New York City and took video of students there swiping into school. Swiping identification cards are read into what’s called the Comprehensive Attendance, Administration and Security System. In September, CAASS is coming to New Britain High. School officials will no longer allow multiple doors to be open for student arrival in the morning, only the main entrance where CAASS will be set up.

“We’re going to change our culture. The students may know their friend walking in the door but whether door secured behind them or who walks in behind that person; we don’t know who these people are so we want to have them identified and proper attendance count in our building,” Smedley said.

The machines are similar to those you swipe through to ride the subway.

“The students will have a student ID with a bar code that will swipe through like a credit card swipe as they walk in the door. It creates an environment of student safety, student responsibility for attendance and accountability in the building,” Smedley explained.

“It’s actually pretty scary to think about someone coming in, hurting your friends, even you at school,” De Los Santos added.

The new swipe machines cost $2,000 each, and that price is already included in the school budget according to district officials. Down the road, officials hope private donors will help pay for systems in each classroom for attendance purposes.

One person was airlifted to the hospital after a crash involving a car and a motorcycle on Route 44 in Mansfield Wednesday.

Fire officials said the crash happened around 6:45 p.m. in the area of Route 44 and Storrs Road. LifeStar was called in to transport the patient to Hartford Hospital. The extent of the injuries was not immediately clear.

Connecticut State Police are investigating the crash.

Four people were shot on Hillside Avenue in Hartford Wednesday night, according to police.

Assistant Chief of Police Rafael Medina confirmed two people suffered serious injuries in a shooting on Hillside Avenue. Two others suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

All four victims were taken to Hartford Hospital for treatment. None of them have been identified at this time.

The Major Crimes Division has bene called in to investigate.

More information was not immediately available.

Recently unemployed, Richard Schilling decided to tackle the junk in his Brooklyn garage -- and found something that sent a chill down his spine. 

"I was like, 'This is creepy. This is not supposed to be here,'" he said. 

What Schilling found was a heavy gravestone, "a creepy gravestone that should not be in my garage," he said. 

It appeared to be dated Sept. 30, 1793, and bears the name of a baby who lived just 52 days: Lucas, son of Enoch Pond and Peggy Pond. The headstone was traced to a cemetery in Ashford, Connecticut. 

James Revichsky, who oversees the Babcock Cemetery for the town of Ashford, believes the headstone is real. But he has no idea how it got all the way to Brooklyn.

Schilling said his family has owned the Borough Park home for nearly 100 years, and they've had tenants come and go.

"It's such a creepy thing to keep as a souvenir. Why would anybody want this?" he wondered.

He plans to gladly give it back to the town of Ashford in the coming weeks, and put the matter to rest. 

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in every landmark Supreme Court case that advanced gay rights in his more than three decades on the court.  And while LGBTQ advocates celebrate his legacy, there remains fear for what the future will hold, NBC News reported. 

One of those cases, most notably, was Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage across the United States in June 2015. Now, nearly three years to the day after that ruling, he announced Wednesday that he will retire from the court at the end of July. 

Kennedy has written the majority opinion in other cases, like Romer v. Evans that struck down Amendment 2 of the Colorado Constitution, which barred local governments from recognizing gay men and lesbians as a protected class. He also wrote the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas which struck down Texas' anti-sodomy law, and thus all remaining anti-sodomy laws across the country. The case, in essence, legalized consensual homosexual activity across the U.S.

“In each of these cases, he emphasized the dignitary harm that discrimination against LGBT people does,” Michael C. Dorf, a former clerk of Kennedy's, said. “I think he got there well before the country, but he sort of waited and moved along and took the country with him in a lot of ways.”

Wallace de Oliveira Rocha dreamed of owning an official Brazil national team jersey ahead of the 2018 World Cup. But at $250 Reals ($66 USD), the 12-year-old from Vila Cruzeiro, a favela north of Rio de Janeiro, knew it was a long-shot for his poverty-stricken family to afford.

Hours before the Brazilian team stepped on the field at Rostov Arena in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, for their premiere game against Switzerland, Rocha’s mom, Sandra Rocha, took her youngest of five children to a local seamstress in their shantytown and asked if she could help, according to a local photographer who shared the family's story with NBC.

"Tia Neuza" (Auntie Neuza), as she is affectionately known among residents in the Penha neighborhood, grabbed a piece of yellow fabric and sat at her sewing machine. She fashioned a sleeveless tank with green trimmings and charged them $10 Reals ($2.75 USD) — another bill Sandra would have to pay on credit.

For Brazil’s second game against Costa Rica on June 22, Wallace wanted to personalize his "jersey." His mother had suggested he use his name, but Wallace already had one in mind: Philippe Coutinho.

Tia Neuza used a green marker to write "Coutinho" and "11," the attacker's national squad number, on the shirt.

Wallace, donning his makeshift jersey, and his cousin made their way to a free viewing party for the match where locals were projecting the game on a large screen outside on the street. The young fan was then captured in a photo by Brazilian photographer Bruno Itan.

“What caught my attention about Wallace was his creativity. He doesn’t have any money, but that didn’t stop him from representing his favorite player and number,” Itan told NBC in an email. “I actually noticed him before taking the photo and waited for Coutinho to appear on the screen during the national anthem to snap the shot.”

Coutinho scored the first of Brazil's two goals in that game, beating Costa Rica 2-1.

Itan didn’t speak to Wallace that day. To the photographer from the notorious Alemão favela, Rio’s largest and one of the most dangerous, Wallace was just another subject in his effort to capture how residents in Rio’s slums cheer on the Seleção.

After posting the photo on his Instagram page, one of several he added that day, the image of a young, poor boy gazing at his idol while wearing a DIY shirt bearing his name garnered thousands of likes and over a hundred comments in 24 hours. Many users tagged Coutinho in the hopes that the soccer star would see the photo.

The response gave Itan an idea: he was going to find a way to connect the boy and the Brazilian ace.

Itan returned to Vila Cruzeiro the next day and tracked down Wallace. He then launched a social media campaign, asking users to share the photo with the hashtag #Wallace11 and to tag Coutinho.

“I want this photo to reach Philippe Coutinho so that he can see what an inspiration he is to kids in the favelas and to send a motivational message to Wallace, or who knows, maybe an autographed jersey,” Itan wrote in the post.

Within four hours the photo had traveled 10,000 miles across the world and reached Coutinho in Moscow.

"I got the photo! I sent you a private message, please respond when you can," Coutinho commented in Itan’s post.

Itan told NBC Coutinho plans on meeting Wallace when he returns to Brazil after the World Cup. And despite being busy training for Wednesday’s match against Serbia, Coutinho took a moment to thank the young fan for his support in a recorded a video message.

The photographer shared the video with Wallace Tuesday during a surprise visit to the Rocha family's home.

"He was quiet, pensive, trying to take it all in. I don't think he could believe that one of the best players in the world, his idol since Coutinho played for Liverpool, made a video for him, a kid from the slums," Itan recalled to NBC.

And that wasn’t the only gift Itan came bearing. A stranger who saw the Instagram post donated an official team jersey for Wallace.

The Rochas live in a one-room shack, Itan said. Wallace's mother is unemployed and his stepfather is the sole breadwinner. They have a television, but no cable or internet. Wallace told Itan the neighbor lets him use her WI-FI to stream videos of Coutinho playing. 

Asked what teams the 26-year-old midfielder has played for, according to Itan, Wallace didn't hesitate to recite Coutinho's soccer biography.

Wallace is also a soccer player. The self-proclaimed ace spends his Saturdays at the Vila Cruzeiro's Vacaria field playing with two different soccer groups. His dream is to play for Rio's Vasco da Gama junior league, following in the footsteps of his idol, and eventually be good enough to play for a major professional team so he could buy his mom a house.

"His famiy is very poor. I really hope this changes his life and theirs," Itan said. 

Upon news of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement, fear for the future is spreading among abortion rights advocates, NBC News reported. At the same time, anti-abortion groups predicted a once-in-a-generation opportunity to remake the court. 

Kennedy was a swing vote who sometimes sided with the liberal wing of the court on social issues.

President Donald Trump has long vowed to nominate justices to the Supreme Court who would work to overturn Roe vs. Wade, a landmark case that legalized abortion nationwide. Now, he has his chance to nominate someone to help make that happen. 

The "right to access abortion in this country is on the line," the Planned Parenthood Federation of America said.

Kennedy's retirement "marks a pivotal moment for the fight to ensure every unborn child is welcomed and protected under the law," said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony List, whose political action committee backs anti-abortion-rights candidates.

It remains unclear, though, whether opponents of abortion rights would actually have the votes to overturn Roe, regardless of Kennedy's replacement. 

Twelve teenage soccer players and their coach remained trapped inside a Thai cave Thursday after entering the structure on Saturday, and a U.S. military team has joined the rescue search, NBC News reported.

Along with the U.S., British cave experts have also stepped in to help the Thai navy seals look for the Thai soccer team in the Tham Luang Nang Non cave. Deputy national police chief Wirachai Songmetta said police dogs were also ready to aid in the effort and crews are using all tools at their disposal.

Heavy rain and swiftly rising water have caused setbacks for the rescuers. And divers have faced complicated conditions, like being forced to contort their bodies around L-shaped bends.

Authorities remain hopeful that the team found safety in dry places on higher ground within the cave. Anmar Mirza, coordinator of the National Cave Rescue Commission in the U.S., said the boys' youth and health are to their advantage and if the cave is not too cold, they should be able to survive four to five days with no water and a month or more with water but no food.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Thursday to reconsider its view that prosecuting someone twice — once by a state and again in federal court — doesn't violate the Constitution's protection against double jeopardy. The court will hear the case in the fall.

Among the provisions of the Fifth Amendment, NBC News reported, is that no person shall be "subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb." That's popularly understood to mean that nobody can be put on trial twice for the same crime.

But in a line of cases stretching back more than 150 years, the Supreme Court has ruled that being prosecuted by a state and then again in federal court doesn't violate the clause because the states and the federal government are "separate sovereigns." 

The court has held that when a defendant in a single act breaks both a federal and a state law, that amounts to two distinct offenses and can result in two separate prosecutions. Barring states from prosecuting someone already tried in federal court "would be a shocking and untoward deprivation of the historic right and obligation of the states to maintain peace and order within their confines," the court has said.

Parents and relatives of the victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting formed a nonprofit Thursday to push for policies that could prevent another massacre, NBC News reported.

Stand With Parkland will likely back universal background checks, installing metal detectors and armed guards at all schools and raising the minimum age for buying firearms to 21, said April Schentrup, mother of 16-year-old victim Carmen Schentrup.

"We know this is a complex issue, but we’ve been dealing with this for nearly 20 years — since Columbine," she said. "This is a discussion that needs to be had."

Gun control groups welcomed the effort, but the director of the National Rifle Association's lobbying arm told NBC News in an email that "there are many Parkland students and families [who] want to focus on school safety and reject holding that important goal hostage to the politics of gun control."

Stamford police have arrested the husband of a 74-year-old woman who was found dead in her home earlier this month in what detectives are calling a failed murder-suicide.

Allen Claxton, 74, turned himself in to police Thursday morning on murder charges, according to police.

Detectives were called to the couple's Hycliff Terrace home on June 11 and found Eden Claxton dead inside. They said she had been stabbed in the neck.

Allen Claxton tried to kill himself, police said, and he was hospitalized after the incident.

Claxton was released after posting bond on Thursday and is scheduled to face a judge on Friday.

Power was out for thousands due to a problem with the Waterford substation, but most of the power has been restored.

Eversource was reporting nearly 16,000 outages, with most of the outages being in Waterford and the nearby towns of, Old Lyme, East Lyme, Salem and Montville. As of 12:30 p.m., the number of outages is down to around 700.

There were thousands of power outages when storms came through Thursday morning, but most of the storm-related outages had been restored when the issue surfaced in Waterford.

It’s not clear what caused the substation issue.

Boeing has revealed plans for a futuristic, sleek aircraft capable of flying five times the speed of sound, or about 3,800 miles per hour, NBC News reported. 

Flying that fast, the airliner could reach London from New York City in about two hours, instead of the eight hours it takes on a conventional plane. It would cruise at about 90,000 feet, where passengers could see the blackness of space and the curvature of the Earth, the company's chief hypersonics scientist said.

The new concept, unveiled at an aviation conference in Atlanta this week, would fly the transatlantic route more than twice as fast as the Concorde, a supersonic plane that had limited routes to protect people on the ground from hearing the loud sonic boom produced by the aircraft. Boeing’s new aircraft proposal would fix that by using new technology that mitigates sound.

It's not yet clear if passengers would be willing to pay the high prices that hypersonic air travel would require.

Police are responding to a report of an active shooter at the building of a newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland.

Anne Arundel County police are responding to the report in the 800 block of Bestgate Road. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Chopper4 footage shows a number of people walking out of the building with their hands up. 

The Capital Gazette operates in the building, as well as a number of community papers.

Stay with News4 for more details on this developing story.

As the White House faces court orders to reunite families separated at the border, immigrant children as young as 3 are being ordered into court for their own deportation proceedings, according to attorneys in Texas, California and Washington, D.C.

Requiring unaccompanied minors to go through deportation alone is not a new practice. But in the wake of the Trump administration's controversial family separation policy, more young children — including toddlers — are being affected than in the past.

The 2,000-plus children will likely need to deal with court proceedings even as they grapple with the ongoing trauma of being taken from their parents.

"We were representing a 3-year-old in court recently who had been separated from the parents. And the child — in the middle of the hearing — started climbing up on the table," said Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of Immigrant Defenders Law Center in Los Angeles. "It really highlighted the absurdity of what we're doing with these kids."

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which oversees the deportations of unauthorized immigrants, did not respond to a request for comment.

Toczylowski said parents typically have been tried along with young children and have explained the often-violent circumstances that led them to seek asylum in the U.S.

The children being detained under the new "zero tolerance" policy, though, are facing immigration proceedings without mom or dad by their side.

"The parent might be the only one who knows why they fled from the home country, and the child is in a disadvantageous position to defend themselves," Toczylowski said.

Meanwhile, the broader legal situation is in flux. A federal judge Tuesday night commanded the White House to reunify families within 14 days if the child is under 5 and 30 days if the child is older. The Justice Department has not indicated whether it will appeal. Attorneys who are involved in the cases said it's unclear how the judge's order will work in practice, and when and how it could take effect.

"We don't know how the judge's order is going to play out with reunification of children. What if parents have already been deported?" said Cynthia Milian, a Texas-based attorney at the Powers Law Group.

In the interim, she added, the implications for kids remain an urgent concern.

Given the trauma the children faced in their home country that spurred their families to flee and the pain of being separated from a parent, the expectation that children can mount a legal defense is "unconscionable," said Dr. Benard Dreyer, director of the division of developmental-behavioral pediatrics at New York University School of Medicine.

"It's certainly grossly inappropriate," said Dreyer, who is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics advocacy committee. "I'm ashamed that we're doing this."

Leaders at three legal services organizations and a private firm confirmed that the children are being served with notices to appear in court. They are not entitled to an attorney but rather are given a list of legal services organizations that might help them.

Steve Lee, a UCLA child psychology professor, said expecting the children to advocate for themselves in court is an "incredibly misaligned expectation."

"That couldn't be any less developmentally appropriate," he said, adding that some children may not be mature enough to verbalize a response.

More than 2,000 children who were separated from their parents at the border have been dispatched to the far corners of the nation to care facilities and foster homes.

Officials with the Department of Health and Human Services emphasized Tuesday that the agency is working to unify children with either a parent or a sponsor. But it did not provide a timeline for how long that would take.

"We are working across agencies for reunification of each child with [a] parent or family as soon as that is practical," Jonathan White, HHS' assistant secretary for preparedness and response, said in a media call.

HHS representatives said children in facilities run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement receive adequate care, including medical and mental health services, and at least two phone calls per week with family.

Yet children who are just arriving at care facilities are still not connected with their families, said Megan McKenna, a spokeswoman for Kids in Need of Defense. She said the children arrive at care facilities without a parent's tracking number, and parents don't tend to have their kids' numbers.

After kids arrive in care facilities, HHS officials work on finding a "sponsor" to care for the child, such as a parent, guardian, family member or family friend. Historically, unaccompanied minors — who tended to be teens — found a sponsor in about a month and a half.

However, Rachel Prandini, a staff attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, said finding a sponsor is more difficult now given recent fears that stepping forward to accept a child could trigger a sponsor's deportation.

In April, HHS entered into an agreement with law enforcement officials that requires sponsors and adult family members to submit fingerprints and be subject to a thorough immigration and criminal background check.

HHS officials said the process is meant to protect the child.

Immigration lawyers from around the country have been flying into Texas to help represent children and families, said George Tzamaras, a spokesman for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

It's impossible to know how many children have begun deportation proceedings, Tzamaras said. "There have been reports of kids younger than 3 years old and others as old as 17."

Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges and a jurist in Los Angeles, said that unaccompanied minor cases are heard on a special docket there. She said the judges who take the cases were trained during the last administration on children's developmental stages, impulse control and making sure the proceedings are understandable to children.

She said in a statement that the court's work is vital: "This is not traffic court. A mistake on an asylum case can result in jail, torture or a death sentence," Tabaddor said. "We are a nation of laws. We value fairness, justice and transparency."

She said children seeking asylum tend to make their case in a non-adversarial office setting with a hearing officer.

But that isn't always the case, Prandini said. Lawyers might choose a strategy that requires more time in the courtroom.

"It's difficult for adults at times. They go to court and they get nervous before a judge," Milian said. "Now can you imagine a child having to go before a judge and just explain to them why they're having to flee their country?"

Toczylowski said her organization is trying to help reunify the families so the children can be tried alongside the parents.

"The kids don't understand the intricacies that are involved with deportation and immigration court," she said. "They do understand that they have been separated from their parents, and the primary goal is to get back with people they love."

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

Strong storms brought lightning Thursday morning, which caused a fire that destroyed a barn in on Bashon Hill Road Bozrah.

Fire officials said the barn was used to store hay.

No one was injured in the fire.