Posted on 11/02/2007 4:34:12 AM PDT by Puppage
New Haven (AP) _ A law enforcement official says Cheshire police responding to a fatal home invasion in July delayed entering the home because of assurances from a 911 caller who was told no one would be hurt if police were not notified.
But as officers waited outside, the home erupted into flames, killing two girls. Their mother was strangled, and their father was badly beaten, but survived.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because authorities have not discussed details of the case, says the assurance that no one would be hurt was one of the reasons police did not immediately try to stop the home invasion. The official would not identify the caller.
The mother, 48-year-old Jennifer Hawke-Petit, had been taken to a bank and forced to withdraw $15,000. The official says a bank employee who called police relayed the information that no one would be hurt if police were not notified.
Steven Hayes of Winsted pleaded not guilty today to capital felony and murder, kidnapping, sexual assault and arson charges in connection with the killings.
Joshua Komisarjevsky of Cheshire pleaded not guilty Tuesday to the same charges and waived his probable cause hearing.
Horrifying.
If only the Hawke-Petit family had had some self defense possibilities....I wonder why they were victimized?
How instantaneous was this? No one rushed in?
Local news here said that after raping the girls, they poured gas on & around them. The only one to survive was the father.
And the police acted based on THAT "boiler plate" hold-up note information?
Astounding and terribly tragic.
(I wondered at the time of this story why it took so long for the police to act when the bank had notified police.)
I cannot find fault with the police. If those cretins poured gasoline in the girls’ bedrooms and lit it, it would have taken a few minutes for the fire to be noticed from the outside. And now those subhuman scum plead not guilty.....
This happened almost a year ago and was posted here. I thought it was a new incident until something clicked and I checked the date of the article.
Anyway, it was one of the most horrific things I had read, the kind of thing that makes you wonder how it could have been avoided in the first place.
I think the concensus here was that the father should have been armed . . .
What if games of gotcha are for children. The police didn’t want anyone hurt. They made the best decisions they could,(right or wrong) based on the information available to them at the time. Only people with a personal grudge against the police are interested in condemning them for what they tried to accomplish. If you want perfect, get actors and a script writer and watch it all wrap up in an hour.
Another example of how you can’t rely on the authorities to protect you, and the only justice is vigilante justice.
Me neither. Even if the perps had run into the police at the front door—even if the perps had run past the police at the front door—saving the girls' lives would have been too late or problematical.
Asphyxiation commonly occurs first in fires; so rather than succumbing to the physical trauma, they would already have been doomed.
They were victimized because the two career criminal parolees happened to see the mother and 11 y.o. daughter coming out of the grocery store and followed them home.
They entered the home later that night through an unlocked cellar door. Armed only with air rifles they bought at Walmart, they beat the father unconscious with the baseball bat he took with him to investigate the noise of their break-in.
“...I cannot find fault with the police. ..”
It another Monday morning quarterbacking when some people condemn people for what they did or did not do. The blame for this tragedy lies solely with the monsters that did it. We tie the hands of law enforcement and then bash them when things go awry. Had they rushed into the place and the people were killed because of their actions, the same people would be saying why didnt they just wait and blamed them for acting like cowboys. My prayers go out to the innocents involved.
Thanks to the way the courts have boxed them in, the police can do very little to prevent a crime. They investigate crimes after the fact and attempt to arrest the criminals.
The only person who can defend you is you.
July 23rd is hardly a year ago.
http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-cheshire1031.artoct31,0,1554603.story
I live two miles from where this happened, and I say leave the Chesire police alone. The real scandal here is the self defence laws in CT. Here's part of a document CASTLE DOCTRINE AND SELF-DEFENSE which I think is CT's official position:
But deadly physical force cannot be used unless the actor reasonably believes that the attacker is using or about to use deadly physical force or inflicting or about to inflict great bodily harm.
Additionally, a person is not justified in using deadly physical force if he knows he can avoid doing so with complete safety by:
1. retreating, except from his home or office in cases where he was not the initial aggressor or except in cases where he a peace officer, special policeman, or a private individual assisting a peace officer or special policeman at the officer's directions regarding an arrest or preventing an escape;
2. surrendering possession to property the aggressor claims to own; or
3. obeying a demand that he not take an action he is not otherwise required to take.
Revolting.
I know. I’m tired today.
If the father had a 45 auto instead. The story would have been on the Bang list here with the headline "Two home invaders shot dead"
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