Interstate 95 north is closed in North Stonington after a wrong-way crash, according to the state Department of Transportation.
According to the CT DOT website CTtravelsmart.com, the highway is shut down between exits 92 and 93.
Details on injuries were not immediately available.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Hamden Police say a man tried to burglarize a home while a teen resident was home and a contractor was working inside.
Police said the suspect, identified as 42 Calvin Armstrong III, entered a home on Adla Drive through a kitchen door around 1 p.m., walked by a 17-year-old resident and headed to an upstairs bedroom.
The teen followed Armstrong and found him rummaging through dresser drawers, according to police. When the teen told him to leave, Armstrong threatened to punch him in the face, then took off toward Howard Drive.
The teen and a contractor that was also in the home at the time said they initially thought Armstrong was a contractor there to repair the television.
Officers found Armstrong walking on the sidewalk nearby and took him into custody. He was charged with burglary, threatening and interfering with a police officer. He was held in lieu of a $5,000 bond and is due in Meriden Superior Court on October 23.
The second round of PG&E's planned power shutoffs have begun in the East Bay, South Bay and Santa Cruz and the process will continue through midnight, the utility confirmed.
Several communities in Contra Costa, Santa Clara and Alameda Counties are reporting outages at this time.
The unprecedented planned power outages are due to high fire danger, with PG&E closely monitoring weather conditions to decide on whether to push forward with shutting off power in other parts of the region.
The utility started just after midnight to proactively turn off power to roughly 800,000 customers in parts of several Bay Area counties and across much of Northern and Central California amid windy and dry conditions, which create extreme fire danger.
PG&E said it plans to turn off power in three phases -- the first went into effect around 12 a.m. Wednesday, cutting off power to roughly 513,000 customers across Northern California, including areas of Marin, Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties.
Officials with the utility said late Wednesday they were able to re-energize 44,000 customers after the initial round of outages. PG&E anticipated about 60,000 to 80,000 more customers could get their power back later in the evening.
The second phase, which originally was scheduled to begin around 12 p.m. Wednesday, was delayed due to changes in the weather forecast.
PG&E's second round of shutoffs is now estimated for late Wednesday and is expected to impact about 250,000 customers across Northern and Central California, including customers in the following Bay Area counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara.
A third phase of shutoffs is being considered for about 42,000 customers across PG&E's southernmost service areas.
The shutoffs mark the most sweeping effort in state history to prevent wildfires caused by windblown power lines. The move comes after two years of catastrophic fires sent PG&E into bankruptcy and forced it to take more aggressive steps to prevent blazes.
Deliberate outages like these could become the new normal in an era in which scientists say climate change is leading to fiercer blazes and longer fire seasons.
In the Bay Area, some 278,000 customers across eight counties are expected to lose power during the shutoffs, which could potentially last for several days, according to PG&E.
San Francisco is the only county in the nine-county Bay Area where power will not be affected.
The planned outages have prompted many schools and colleges in the Bay Area to cancel classes. See a full list of school closures here.
There were concerns that the power outages would force Caltrans to close the Caldecott and Tom Lantos (Devil's Slide) Tunnels, but both will remain open. Crews brought in temporary generators to power the Caldecott Tunnel and rerouted power to keep the Tom Lantos Tunnels open.
In anticipation of the shutoff, Sonoma County and Santa Clara County have declared a local emergency in response.
The city of Morgan Hill will enforce a curfew Wednesday through Thursday in areas impacted by the shutoff.
"This curfew is for the safety of the community to reduce the opportunity of crime," the city of Morgan Hill said in a Facebook post.
The county-by-county breakdown below shows how many Bay Area customers are expected to be impacted by the shutoffs:
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A crash is causing delays on Interstate 95 North in Old Saybrook, between exits 69 and 70.
The right lane is closed.
Nearly a month after her disappearance, and with searches thus far proving fruitless, officials have once again increased by thousands of dollars the reward for information that can lead them to a missing New Jersey 5-year-old.
Three New Jersey State Police unions on Wednesday announced that they were offering an additional $10,000 in the case of Dulce María Alavez, who vanished last month from a Bridgeton, New Jersey, park. The total reward now stands at $52,000.
The latest funds come from the State Troopers Fraternal Association, the Non-Commissioned Officers Union, and the Superior Officers Association.
Dulce María disappeared Sept. 16 from Bridgeton City Park as she played with her 3-year-old brother. Last week, county prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae said that authorities had received more than 1,000 tips, investigated more than 200 locations and checked in with sex offenders throughout Cumberland County to no avail.
The working hypothesis is that a light-skinned, clean-shaven male who appeared to be between 5-foot-6 and 5-foot-8 inches tall with a thin build was the one who took the girl. Police believe he had acne on his face and wore orange sneakers, red pants and a black t-shirt and drove away in a red van.
However, Webb-McRae acknowledged last week that the red van detail could be wrong.
"I am not wed to the red vehicle. The witness that gave us that information is a child of tender years," Webb-McRae said, adding that people should still not discount the possibility of the van.
Authorities have spoken both to Alavez Pérez's boyfriend and Dulce María's father -- who resides in Mexico -- and have pored over surveillance video in the area to no avail. The girl's family is also cooperating with investigators, Webb-McRae said.
Since the disappearance, more than 300 federal, state and local officers have searched for the girl by land, sea and air and have served more than 50 legal processes, including court orders and subpoenas, the prosecutors said. They've also expanded the search beyond the state of New Jersey and added the girl to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's "Most Wanted" list of kidnapping victims in hopes that they will find her alive.
"In the absence of physical evidence indicating that Dulce has been physically harmed, we remain hopeful and continue to act under the premise that she is alive," Webb-McRae said.
The Connecticut Lotto jackpot started at $1 million and it has just keeps growing as drawing after drawing goes by with no jackpot winner.
The last time anyone won was more than a year and eight months ago and the jackpot for Friday's drawing is up to $24 million.
The last drawing was on Tuesday and 10 tickets won $3,097, while 637 tickets won $56.
Tuesday's winning numbers were: 2-15-16-19-34-43.
Learn how to play here.
State police have made an arrest in connection with a hit-and-run crash in North Stonington last year that killed a 26-year-old Pawcatuck woman.
Matthew Spirito, 32, of Milford, New Hampshire, turned himself in to state police in Connecticut around 5 a.m. on Thursday in connection with a crash on Oct. 9, 2018 that killed 26-year-old Krystal Riske, 26, of Pawcatuck.
Police said she was struck when a vehicle on Route 2 near the rotary with Route 184 went off the road shortly before 7 p.m. Riske sustained a fractured skull, had facial bones shattered, a swollen brain which lacked oxygen and fractures down her spine and was in critical condition.
She was flown to Hartford Hospital in critical condition and died the next day.
Police said the suspect vehicle fled the scene.
Spirito has been charged with misconduct with a motor vehicle, evasion of a responsibility of a motor vehicle-death and failure to drive in established lane.
He was held on $100,000 bond and will appear in court in New London today.
Riske was a graduate of Grasso Technical High School. She took classes at Three Rivers Community College and was currently employed at Petro Gas, formerly known as Spicer Marketplace.
Her family described her as a big personality, someone who was fiercely loyal and could make them laugh. She loved to sing and dance.
“She had a heart of gold. She’d help anybody out,” Krystal's mom, Rhandi Riske, said in a prior interview.
Phone lines were down at all Vernon public schools, as well as the central office, but they have been restored.
A message from the superintendent saod they could not dial internal phone extensions only, not external numbers. Incoming calls were not working either.
The superintendent said in a Facebook post that the IT Department was working with Frontier to resolve the issue.
A truck has struck a gas pipeline on Noble Avenue in Bridgeport, according to police, and they say that it might be difficult to drive through the area.
It happened near the 1300th block.
Police and fire officials are at the scene.
A Tweet from the police department said there “is no threat to life at this time.”
Police have arrested a man in connection with the murder of a 27-year-old Naugatuck woman in Waterbury in 2017.
Police found Lisa Chinova, 27 of Naugatuck, when they responded to 17 Greenmount Terrace just before 7 p.m. on June 22, 2017 after a neighbor called them to report finding a woman who had purple hands and blood on her face, police said.
A patrol officer responded and confirmed that the woman, who was found lying on a bed in a third-floor apartment, was dead, police said. An ambulance was also called and a paramedic pronounced her dead.
At the time, police did not know who the woman was.
During the preliminary investigation, police learned that a resident on the first floor reported hearing a lot of noise from the third-floor apartment early that morning and it sounded like a party.
Just before the police were called, relatives of the first-floor resident checked the third-floor apartment because dogs were barking, but they could not hear anyone upstairs. It was then that they found a woman dead.
Police said they learned that Josue Cruz, 36, and one son were the only people who lived in the third-floor apartment where the woman was found.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner performed an autopsy and detectives continued the investigation, which included interviewing Cruz in June 2017 and in later in February 2018.
On June 23, the medical examiner identified the victim as Chinova. Three months after her death, the manner and cause of her death were undetermined.
Then, in September of this year, police developed new information from a person who they said had knowledge about Chinova’s death. They said they also developed information that Cruz was responsible for the death.
According to police, Cruz had committed domestic assaults unrelated to Chinova and detectives granted arrest warrants for him on two separate incidents of domestic assault involving another victim.
Cruz was apprehended on Oct. 2 in Massachusetts and held on the outstanding domestic violence arrest warrants.
Police said they continued to investigate Chinova’s death and obtained an arrest warrant for Cruz.
On October 9, 2019, members of the Waterbury Fugitive Task Force went to Springfield, Massachusetts and extradited Cruz back to Connecticut.
He has been charged with murder, relating to the death of Chinova; tampering with physical evidence, relating to the death of Chinova; unlawful restraint in the second degree; breach of peace in the second degree; strangulation in the first degree; assault in the second degree; and two counts of failure to appear in the second degree.
He was held on $1.25 million bond.
An Alaska resident found a stray SD card lying on the street in late September and discovered gruesome content inside: images and video of a woman appearing to be assaulted and murdered, NBC News reports.
This week, Brian Smith, 48, was charged with first-degree murder in the case, the Anchorage Police Department said in a Wednesday statement.
The memory card, which was labeled “homicide at midtown Marriott,” was given to police by the woman who found it, charging documents obtained by NBC affiliate KTUU in Anchorage showed. It had 39 images and 12 videos that recorded the alleged crime.
The graphic videos show a woman being strangled and a man’s voice saying “just...die,” the Associated Press reported.
With more and more people becoming sick from vaping, some believe it might be time for tougher rules for those products.
The issue could soon come up during the next legislative session.
“We’re getting reports of kids in elementary school using vaping products. So this is really a problem we have to address,” said State Senator Mary Abrams, D- Cheshire.
The issue of kids and vaping was the hot topic at a forum in Cheshire on Thursday.
It comes as nearlu 1,300 people in the country have developed lung injuries became of vaping.
While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is still trying to find the cause of the epidemic, it appears young men who vape products with THC are at particular risk.
In Connecticut, 31 people have fallen ill, according to Public Health Commissioner Renee Coleman-Mitchell.
“This is a very serious public health concern. We have had one death to date,” said Coleman-Mitchell.
Efforts are building to teach kids and parents about the potential dangers of vaping.
But Abrams thinks lawmakers can do more.
“We want to look at where vaping products are being sold. They seem to be readily available and we have to look at that issue. They’re even online and how to keep them out of the hands of kids,” said Abrams.
The senator also wants to look into whether the state should ban flavors.
Over at the Whiff ‘n Puff in New Britain, owner Dave Dooling is all in favor of trying to stop kids from vaping.
At the shop, customers have to show ID and there are lots of signs making it clear you have to be 21 or over to purchase things.
“My dad died of smoking related heart disease. That was key to me, getting people a healthier alternative,” said Dooling.
He believes flavored products can help adults quit smoking.
“That’s the key thing is trying to get away from that tobacco taste and away from that tobacco flavor because you’re trying to get away from tobacco,” said Dooling.
Three people, including an 85-year-old man, an 83-year-old woman and a 17-year-old girl, were killed and three others were injured in a wrong-way crash on Interstate 95 in North Stonington, Connecticut Wednesday night.
Connecticut State Police say the 911 calls started coming in at 7:45 p.m. Police were alerted to a driver heading southbound in the northbound lanes of I-95 near the North Stonington exit. Moments later, police say another call came in, this time reporting a head on collision. Three people were killed; Roger and Dorothy Noel both in their 80s and from Warwick and the 17-year-old wrong-way driver from Westerly.
"A wrong way driver is kind of your worst case scenario. Because you could be wearing your seatbelt and you could be driving defensively and still you don't expect to see those headlights coming at you,” said AAA Greater Hartford Spokesperson Amy Parmenter.
Parmenter said whether you’re the wrong way driver or you see one, the goal is to get out of that situation as quickly as possible.
“To pull over to call 911. That is something of course we saw in this situation. There were a number of calls in to 911 but sometimes that tragedy can happen so quickly because you have a wrong way driver, it's on a highway, it's night time that combination is really an accident waiting to happen.”
“It affects everybody. That’s even sadder,” Bill Whitright of Richmond, Rhode Island pointed out.
Whitright drives back and forth from his Richmond, Rhode Island home to work in Groton every day along the same route where the crash happened. He doesn’t understand how the teen got confused.
“If you’re taking the exit ramp and you looking your rear-view mirror you can see the signs. They say wrong way do not enter. There’s usually two sets of signs,” said Whitright.
Arthur Fischer agrees.
“I don’t think there’s a problem. We should be very careful,” said Arthur Fischer of Orange.
Connecticut State Police are still investigating the crash. A Connecticut Department of Transportation spokesperson questions whether the teen got onto the highway in the wrong direction via a ramp.
“Certainly there’s opportunities for motorists to stop and turn around on the highway or to cross the center median,” said Kevin Nursick.
Last year, the state of Connecticut finished a $5.5 million project to upgrade the wrong-way signs at all of the state’s 700 on and off ramps.
“Every ramp has no less than six warning signs telling you that you are going to be getting on the highway in the wrong direction. They’re very visible. They’re reflective, they’re larger, and they are lower to the ground to be more in line with the motorists’ vision,” said Nursick.
"I’ve never really seen any issues. So, I don’t really think it’s confusing,” said Ian Senecal of Norwalk, who drives the route to Rhode Island for work every other week. "It’s just incredibly unfortunate."
Meanwhile, on the other side of the state the DOT is in the midst of working on a pilot program to cut down even further on one-way crashes. A camera will gauge whether a car is coming in the wrong direction and alert the driver with an additional signal.
“This is as in your face as you can be. Flashing lights. Wrong way,” said Nursick.
It will still be some time before most intersections see that technology. Nursick further down the line are cameras that alert police of wrong-way drivers. He said Connecticut does not currently have the infrastructure to support that.
There have been 129 crashes between exits 92 and 93 in Stonington in the past five years, according to data collected by the University of Connecticut’s Transportation Safety Research Center. However, none of those were wrong-way crashes, until Wednesday night.
“They were in their golden years, enjoying each other and for something as horrible as this to happen, I can’t understand how. I feel sorry for the people involved,” said Whitright.
Are tipped workers being paid fairly? It was one of the questions at the heart of Thursday’s public hearing at the State Capitol.
Restaurant owners and workers held an open discussion with lawmakers and the Department of Labor to discuss several issues including if restaurant workers could sue their employers over possible lost wages.
“There are a lot of questions,” said Kurt Westby, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Labor. “A lot of concerns on both sides, to come up with an arrangement, moving forward that’s equitable and fair for employers and employees alike.”
Among the primary issues is what’s called the 80-20 rule. This allows restaurant owners to pay servers and bartenders less than minimum wage so long as 80 percent or more of their responsibilities are tip-related functions. The DOL says it’s the restaurants’ responsibility to monitor.
“Ultimately the manager directs the work. So, the manager should be able to determine that,” explained Westby. “The manager, under the law has an obligation to determine that.”
One former server says restaurants take advantage of the 80-20 rule. She says servers, who work below minimum wage, are often asked to do side work, including cleaning and prepping that would otherwise be handled by additional employees.
“It’s only supposed to be 20 percent of your work. But if you really look at it. If you were to time it. It would be way more than 20 percent of your work,” said Valerie Nettleton, a former restaurant server from Madison.
In Connecticut servers are paid $6.38 per hour hour and bartenders $8.23 per hour hour. Republican state Rep. David Rutigliano, who is also a restaurant owner, says including tips, Connecticut servers and bartenders make well over minimum wage.
“The servers on average in Connecticut make about $25 d an hour. Claimed wages by the way. Fully taxable,” he said.
Nettleton disagrees, calling that statement, “a joke.” What she does agree with though is that restaurant owners and servers need to find common ground.
“I think the restaurants and the servers need to come together and decide what’s fair,” said Nettleton. “What’s going on right now is absolutely not fair.”
Fiona Hill, who was until recently President Donald Trump’s top aide on Russia and Europe, plans to tell Congress that Rudy Giuliani and E.U. ambassador Gordon Sondland circumvented the National Security Council and the normal White House process to pursue a shadow policy on Ukraine, a person familiar with her expected testimony told NBC News.
Hill’s appearance next week before Congress has stoked fear among people close to the president, said a former senior White House official, given her central role overseeing Russia and Ukraine policy throughout most of the Trump administration.
Hill, through her attorney Lee Wolosky, declined to comment.
When it came to their dealings in Ukraine over the last year, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman wore two hats, NBC News reports.
The Florida businessmen were helping President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani set up meetings with high level Ukrainian officials, according to documents obtained by the State Department inspector general. Giuliani has acknowledged that he lobbied those people to investigate the Bidens and the 2016 campaign, in what Democrats say was an effort to uncover dirt on the president's political enemies.
But Parnas and Fruman were also trying to make money by drumming up a deal to sell liquified natural gas to Ukraine’s big state energy company, and to oust the management at the company with help from their friends in the Trump administration, two people familiar with the matter told NBC News.
The charges filed against the men Thursday allege that their playbook was to pursue political influence as a way of furthering their business interests. That’s exactly what they appeared to be doing with the contributions to a Trump-linked political committee, and their work with Giuliani in Ukraine, according to the two sources.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was duped into phone conversations with Russian pranksters posing as Turkish officials in August, his office confirmed to NBC News.
"We have been successful in stopping many efforts to prank Senator Graham and the office, but this one slipped through the cracks. They got him," Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop told NBC.
In recordings of the calls obtained by Politico, Graham bad-mouthed the same Kurdish allies he's accused President Donald Trump of betraying.
Part of a Manchester neighborhood was evacuated due to a gas leak Thursday.
Fire officials said homeowners at 16 Flower St. called to report the strong smell of gas and a hissing around 5:22 p.m. When crews arrived they found reading of 100 percent gas in the basement, and began evacuating the surrounding homes.
The call came in around the same time crews were battling a fire on academy street, and mutual aid was requested.
Eversource responded and cut power to the area while CNG cut the gas supply.
Firefighters ventilated the home and the residents were able to return.
No one was hurt.
A career diplomat who served as senior advisor to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has decided to step down, two State Department officials told NBC News on Thursday, just as foreign service officers find themselves caught in the middle of a confrontation between the White House and Democratic lawmakers leading an impeachment inquiry.
P. Michael McKinley, a seasoned foreign service officer who served as ambassador to Afghanistan, Colombia, Brazil and Peru, has told his colleagues he is resigning, the two officials said.
McKinley's resignation was first reported by The Washington Post.
Crews were busy getting the finish line set up for the Eversource Hartford Marathon in downtown Hartford Thursday.
“We have the marathon, a half marathon, a 5K, a team relay, kids run, and we also have a bike ride going on early in the morning as well, ” said Josh Miller, vice president of the Hartford Marathon Foundation.
Around 10,000 people are expected to race, and 60,000 more will watch Saturday. The race course runs through Hartford, West Hartford, East Hartford, and South Windsor.
“If you’re planning on traveling that day and don’t want to be impacted by the race check those out before you take off in the morning,” Miller said.
Security will be tight.
“We have several hundred officers working,” said Lt. Paul Cicero of the Hartford Police Department. “Not just Hartford. State police, State Capitol, all surrounding towns including FBI homeland security and even members of the NYPD coming here offering their assistance as well.”
People run the marathon for all kinds of reasons and causes.
For Jessie Sythe and his wife Courtney, it’s because they always knew they wanted to become foster parents.
"A child that is in foster care is dealing with a lot of circumstances that are out of their control,” he said. “They are looking for support in their lives."
After a lot training and certification they opened up their home and hearts to foster children about three years ago.
"We've had to about 11 kids come through our home,” Sythe said. “Two of them have been long-term placement. We have one that's an adult now. He's living on his own and he comes to visit every week and he calls me dad so it's pretty great."
Sythe is running the half marathon in Hartford Marathon this year participating for a second time to raise awareness about children in foster care.
"It has its challenges, but the struggles are part of that process and it makes all the great things that come from caring for children in foster care that much better," Sythe said.
He says his kids are the source of his strength that push him past the finish line.
"I just think about my kids,” he said. “Whenever it gets tough. I just put them in my head. You want to show them that you can do something if you put your mind to it."
