Sadly, he needed a gun at home

How could a husband and father survive when his family does not?

 

No, they caught the people who did it.

 

Gun Sales Climb in the wake of this home invasion.

 

Check out their waiting periods!

 

From this link:

 

From VCDL Alert:

* Have a gun on your person at home or within very fast reach at all times
* Don't assume you will have time to go chasing all over the house to
get your gun - seconds could be the difference between life and death
* Don't assume you can reason or beg your way out of being murdered.
Many murderers enjoy killing and get an even bigger thrill when their
victim begs and pleads to be allowed to live. Your only hope is to
be able to overpower or kill them before they kill you

<http>

August 7, 2007
When Horror Came to a Connecticut Family
By MANNY FERNANDEZ and ALISON LEIGH COWAN
CHESHIRE, Conn., Aug. 6 ó Dr. William A. Petit Jr., his head bloodied
and legs bound, stumbled out of a rear basement door of his two-story
home here into a pouring rain, calling the name of a neighbor for
help.

The neighbor heard the shouting, but so did the two men inside the
house, who peeked outside from an upstairs window. They were both
serial burglars with drug habits, having racked up numerous
convictions for stealing car keys and pocketbooks.

This time, they took something far more precious.

The men, the authorities say, had already strangled Dr. Petitís wife,
Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and in short order would also kill the
coupleís two daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11. The elder
suspect, Steven J. Hayes, 44, had poured gasoline on the girls and
their mother, according to a lawyer and a law enforcement official
involved in the case, in hopes of concealing DNA evidence of sexual
assault. He had raped Ms. Hawke-Petit, and his partner, Joshua
Komisarjevsky, 26, had sexually assaulted Michaela.

Moments after Dr. Petit escaped, as the house was being surrounded by
police officers, the men lighted the gasoline. The girls were tied to
their beds but alive when the gas Mr. Hayes had spread around the
house was set aflame.

It was about 9:50 a.m. on July 23 when Dr. Petit, 50, burst into his
backyard on what is normally a quiet street in a quiet town of 29,000
in central Connecticut. On this stormy summer morning it was the site
of one of the most savage crimes in the state in decades. By 10:01,
Mr. Hayes and Mr. Komisarjevsky had been captured. On Tuesday morning
they are expected to be presented in New Haven County Court for their
first appearance in the venue where they will be tried; they have
been formally charged in State Superior Court in Meriden with capital
felonies, which could bring the death penalty.

Interviews with law enforcement officials and lawyers for the men,
and friends, co-workers and relatives of all involved, along with a
study of court records, paint a picture of what happened that morning
and show that there were missed opportunities on both sides of the
law leading up to the deaths.

The criminal justice system failed to treat Mr. Hayes and Mr.
Komisarjevsky as serious offenders despite long histories of
recidivism, repeatedly setting them free on parole. The suspects
never capitalized on those chances to turn their lives around,
instead apparently forming a new criminal alliance after meeting at a
drug treatment center in Hartford.

"There's no question about it: The system didn't work," Dr. Petit's
father, William A. Petit Sr., 73, said last weekend outside his home
in Plainville, 12 miles north, where the family has long formed a
pillar of civic life. He paused, then added: "It's too late now."

The authorities say the intruders entered the house through an open
door at 3 a.m. Monday as Dr. Petit slept in a chair on the first
floor, his wife and daughters in their rooms upstairs. The previous
evening, the men had followed Ms. Hawke-Petit and Michaela home from
the parking lot of a Super Stop & Shop three miles away.

The authorities say that the Petit home was at least the third in
Cheshire that the two men burglarized since the start of that
weekend. They sneaked into one through a screen door and took a money
clip - with credit and A.T.M. cards, and $140 in cash ó from the
kitchen counter Sunday morning. They broke in through a back screen
of another Saturday night.

Why the spree turned violent on Sorghum Mill Drive remains unclear.

On Sunday evening, Mr. Hayes and Mr. Komisarjevsky had driven to a
nearby Wal-Mart and bought an air rifle and rope. Once inside the
house, they clubbed Dr. Petit over the head with a baseball bat and
tied him up in the basement.

Between 4 and 4:30 a.m., Mr. Hayes went to a BP station on Main
Street, where he bought four cans of gasoline.

A Note to a Bank Teller

Shortly before 9:30 a.m. that Monday, Ms. Hawke-Petit walked into a
Bank of America branch and withdrew $15,000 from the account she
shared with her husband. Mr. Hayes waited in the parking lot in
Maplecroft Plaza, the same shopping center where the two men had
watched Ms. Hawke-Petit and her daughter the day before.

Ms. Hawke-Petit told the teller that she had to have the money
because her family was being held hostage, and that if the police
were notified, her family would be killed.

Debbie Biggins, 50, was opening a new account at the bank when she
noticed Ms. Hawke-Petit, who seemed tense and in a rush. "I could
feel it," Mrs. Biggins said in a recent interview. "I felt fear."
After Ms. Hawke-Petit left, Mrs. Biggins said, she saw the teller
hand a manager a slip of paper.

A bank employee called 911 about 9:30. "The call came in as a
suspicious transaction with a hostage situation, but it wasn't
clear," said a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of
anonymity because the matter is still under investigation. The
Cheshire police have refused to release a full timeline indicating
when officers arrived on Sorghum Mill Drive, but described their
response as "immediate."

By 9:45 a.m., seven to nine Cheshire police officers, including SWAT
team members, were working to secure a perimeter around the Petit
house, and a police helicopter was en route.

About five minutes later, Dr. Petit stumbled out of a basement door
onto the rear of his property, calling the name of a neighbor, who
took the bleeding doctor into his garage and dialed 911.

After lighting the fire, the two men jumped into the familyís
Chrysler Pacifica sport utility vehicle. They crashed into a police
vehicle in the driveway, then slammed into two police cruisers parked
nose to nose as a barricade not far from the house, where they were
taken into custody.

Inside the house on Sorghum Mill Drive, Hayley and Michaela died of
smoke inhalation, not from their burns, according to the Connecticut
medical examiner. Their mother was found downstairs.

 

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Time to admit the 'gun nuts' are right

08/03/2007
By Keith C. Burris

In the aftermath of the Petit family slayings in Cheshire, we all
reached for explanations: How do human beings sink this low? How
could this tragedy have been prevented? Why?
There are so many nagging questions. They all need to be asked. And
maybe some old arguments need to be hashed out again.

Why not a more stringent "three strikes and you're out" law in this
state? Connecticut's version is so weak that it's more like "30
strikes and we'll think about it while you strike again."

Why not speed up the criminal trial process for repeat violent
offenders? Get them off the streets. It's been proposed many times.
Most people agree it should be done. It never happens.

Can't we better monitor the probation process?

Can't we do a better job of predicting -- figuring out which
non-violent criminals are about to turn violent?

Are home alarms really effective?

How about dogs?

But somehow all of these ideas pale before the barbarity of this
particular crime.

That is why one old question is worth asking again. It is this: What
if the Second Amendment is for real? Is it possible that it should it
be revered, just like the First Amendment?

Sam Ervin said, "The Constitution should be taken like mountain
whiskey -- undiluted and untaxed." Maybe that applies to all of the
Constitution.

Is it possible that the Second Amendment is not a quaint and
antiquated remnant of a world that will never return, but an idea as
relevant and sound today as when it was written?

Is it possible that we are not talking about the right of the
government to form a militia when there is no standing army, but the
right of the individual to defend himself, or herself, against both
tyranny and lawlessness? Maybe we are talking about the right of
self-defense -- the right of the individual to take up arms against a
government that wants to oppress, be it foreign or domestic. And the
right of the individual to defend himself against criminals, brutes,
and barbarians when local police seem unable to stop them.

Might the Second Amendment matter almost as much as the First?

I think the answer is yes.

And just like the First, the Second is practical, newly relevant, and
far wiser than the watered-down alternatives.

I don't think George Bush wants to impose martial law on his fellow
citizens. But he has diluted habeas corpus. And he has enlarged Big
Brother. You have to stop and think about a government that wants to
control the thoughts and behavior of its people.

Should such a government be permitted to disarm them as well?

And whereas the reform of the criminal justice system along some of
the lines suggested above (a real "three strikes" law and faster
trials for violent offenders) would not have saved the lives of
Jennifer, and Hayley, and Michaela Petit, a gun might have.

I don't say it would have.

I say it might have.

Had Dr. William Petit had access to a gun and known how to use it, he
might have been able to dispatch the two perpetrators, who were armed
with only an air gun and ropes.

Moreover, the three victims here were women.

What if Mrs. Hawke-Petit had been trained in the use of firearms?
Suppose she had been able to get to a gun after her husband was
beaten into unconsciousness by the invaders? Or when she was forced
to take one captor to the bank to fetch him money?

It's worth thinking about.

Women and children are now the major targets of predators in our
society. Government is not protecting them very well. Many
professional women who work in cities know this and take courses in
self-defense. A gun may be the only realistic self-defense against
the sort of criminals we are talking about here.

And if a few women took care of a few thugs in cases like this; if a
few stories like this one ended in a different way -- with a woman
blowing one of these brutes to kingdom come -- it might be a
deterrent. Lives upon lives might be spared.

A friend of mine said: "The gun nuts are back."

They are.

And they are right.

Mind you, we are talking about arming people who are trained and know
how to use a weapon.

No one should have a gun who has not been trained.

Just as one gets training in handling a boat, motorcycle, or car, one
must learn how to use and safely store a gun. (The National Rifle
Association maintains an extensive national network of programs in
firearms training and education.)

And, obviously, no one would be forced to own a gun.

A second caveat: Encouraging citizens to arm themselves is no
"answer" to crimes like the Petit murders.

An "answer" does not exist.

But it is one of several remedies when we are faced with palpable evil.

All possible remedies should be on the table:

-- Various reforms of the justice system, like a real
three-strike-law for predatory offenders.

-- Better psychological treatment for troubled youth.

-- Religious training, in both love and self-restraint, especially
when people are young.

-- Prison programs that both retain the hard core and educate the educable.

-- More and better home alarm systems.

-- More cops visible in more neighborhoods.

-- Dobermans.

All of these approaches have merit.

So does self-defense.

None of these options "fix" a society that can produce human beings
who torture and kill the defenseless for sport.

No one step or program can plug every hole in America's justice
system, or its soul.

But there are times when a gun in the hands of a potential victim may
save a life.

Let's admit -- since the murderers, and druggies, and psychos, and
thieves already have guns -- that arming the peaceful, law-abiding,
decent, and productive people, whether in a school, or a private
home, or on the way to a parked car, is an option that also has merit.

Keith C. Burris is editorial page editor of the Journal Inquirer.