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When one thinks about alcohol-related deaths, fatal crashes often come to mind.
Take the case of Brianne Colonna, for example. The then-27-year-old was drunk and driving 60 mph through Waterford in December 2016 when she crossed the double-yellow line and slammed into another vehicle, killing 24-year-old Stephanie Turowski of Waterford, an aspiring teacher. Colonna, a licensed clinical social worker whose sister died by heroin overdose in February 2018, offered a weeping apology when she was sentenced to 7½ years in prison in December last year, saying she wished she, herself, had died instead. In handing down her sentence, Judge Kevin P. McMahon said drunken driving cases are the worst cases because everybody involved loses. "Welcome to my world of drunk driving death," he said. "It sucks." But fatal crashes are just one part of the story. Per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, alcohol kills about 88,000 people annually — more than fatal overdoses on all other drugs, combined — through cancer, liver cirrhosis, pancreatitis, suicide and other ways. Yet Jane Ungemack, an assistant professor in the Department of Community Medicine and Health Care at the University of Connecticut, said the topic doesn’t always garner the attention it should. “Because we’re so involved in fighting the opioid issue, I’m afraid we're forgetting about things like alcohol and that it’s dangerous,” said Ungemack, who has been doing research and tracking data for state agencies since the 1990s. “We’re not appreciating that we’re living with another, more prevalent potential issue.” Read more at https://www.theday.com/local-news/20190714/alcohol-use-steady-but-still-high-in-connecticut.
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4/28/2019 0 Comments Everything you need to know about tolls — and a plan against them — in ConnecticutDiscussing tolls in New London on Thursday, Gov. Ned Lamont said he couldn't "think of a more important priority to get this state going again."
Indeed, tolls have been a hot topic since a state-commissioned study called for 82 electronic toll gantries across 13 Connecticut highways last fall. While those numbers have been refined — Lamont's latest plan would have 50 gantries spanning four highways — most neighboring states have tolls on just one highway, not several. But other transportation funding proposals are on the table, including a House bill, a Senate bill and the Republicans' Prioritize Progress plan, which doesn't include tolls. Read on for an analysis of each option and excerpts from the more than 50 readers who responded to our voluntary CuriousCT survey — on www.theday.com, by email, on social media and even by snail mail. Read more at https://www.theday.com/local-news/20190428/everything-you-need-to-know-about-tolls---and-plan-against-them---in-connecticut. New London — When he started a sober living operation on Prest Street last summer, Clarence “Chuck” Montgomery could not have imagined the year ahead of him.
In April, then-resident Zachary Ramsdell died in the kitchen of 47 Prest St., a heroin overdose the cause. In May, business partner Daryl McGraw was charged with disorderly conduct and left his role with the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. One tenant is going through the eviction process, a procedure Montgomery wasn’t aware he needed to follow until recently. And the future of the homes at 42 and 47 Prest St. is up in the air. “I was just trying to do something that really helps these guys get from point A to B,” Montgomery said of the homes, which aimed to help recently incarcerated men readjust to society. “I’m just a minister who used to be in the streets. Somebody looked out for me and I tried to offer that same thing to these guys.” “Was it a perfect world?” he continued. “Well, I’m finding out that it wasn’t.” In New London, an estimated 35 sober houses exist. City officials have proposed an ordinance that would allow for inspection of the homes, but for now, many operate under the radar. At least seven people have died in New London sober homes since 2014. The beginning Christina Bliven, who has children with McGraw, owns the home at 42 Prest St. She said she gave use of it as an “in-kind donation” when she learned what Montgomery and McGraw were trying to do. Wanting to create a two-tier program, Montgomery said he began renting the house at 47 Prest St. from owner Jakub Micengendler when it opened up last summer. In a nutshell, Montgomery hoped men would come from prison or drug rehabilitation programs to 47 Prest St., where they would attend meetings, find jobs and stay sober. The men who showed promise could graduate to 42 Prest St., where they would have a bit more freedom. He called the operation the Friendship House. Montgomery said he and McGraw hammered out a contract before opening the homes for business. Among other things, the contract says the homes have zero tolerance for drug or alcohol use and that residents can be asked to leave for any reason. The contract also informs signees that their belongings will be donated to charity if they fail to remove them within 48 hours of being asked to leave. Speaking by phone earlier this month, Montgomery said the pair didn’t consult a lawyer when crafting the contract. As is true of most sober home operators, they also didn’t reach out to local or state officials. New London zoning regulations don’t address sober living situations. The fire department only inspects rooming houses, or homes with seven or more unrelated occupants. And the state isn’t involved because the homes don’t provide addiction treatment. “There is no blueprint,” Montgomery said, noting that he was in line to get both homes certified with the nonprofit Community Speaks Out. “But even (certification), does that mean all this other stuff is not going to happen? It’s happening everywhere. The world is still trying to figure this out.” Read more at https://www.theday.com/policefirecourts/20180526/rise-and-fall-of-new-london-sober-living-operation. East Lyme — For members of the Majchrzak family, it was a no-brainer: The only way to do their son justice in death would be to tell the truth about his life.
After all, as much as the 24-year-old’s big personality and love for sports defined him, so, too, did his battle with addiction — and by all accounts, Daniel “Danny” Majchrzak fought like hell. “If we just said his death was ‘unexpected,’ that would be doing him a great disservice,” said Chris Majchrzak, his mother. “Because he struggled with this and he tried so hard to overcome it.” Last Feb. 3, the Majchrzaks got the call they had been dreading for nearly six years. Records show Danny had carfentanil, a drug intended to tranquilize large animals, in his system when he died. As first responders across the country have noted, the standard two doses of naloxone do little to reverse an overdose of that drug, which is an estimated 100 times more powerful than heroin. When she sat down to write her son’s obituary, Chris was at a loss. But then the words poured out, “like it was coming from Danny.” Her son loved basketball. He could talk to anyone, from any walk of life. He gave to others habitually. And he struggled with addiction. “Addiction is a chronic brain disease that can be managed with treatment,” the obituary reads. “It is not a moral failing or character flaw. ... We ask, in Danny's memory, that you reach out to someone who may be struggling. Grab their hand. Don't let go. Never Give Up.” At Danny’s memorial service, his father, Mark Majchrzak, recalled, one woman said she wished she had written the obituary of her child the same way. The family got cards from strangers, too, thanking them for their candor. “We knew people would talk about it,” Chris continued. “If we didn’t come out with it and be honest, they would think we were ashamed of him. And we weren’t. We loved him. “We were so proud of all the strength he had.” Read more at www.theday.com/policefirecourts/20180120/cause-of-death-overdose-east-lyme-familys-honest-obituary. The young business owner never wanted to pay the gangs, and at first she didn’t have to.
Back in El Salvador, the 30-something woman — she asked to remain anonymous out of fear for her safety — owned a popular restaurant. Like many others in her neighborhood, the gang members often stopped by for a quick bite to eat. Like everyone else, they paid their fair share to do so. Then they began asking for favors. They’d say they needed help, but she knew they were taking advantage of her. They wanted meals without paying. They wanted free rides from her husband, a taxi driver. And then they wanted money. “It’s the fear that made us say yes to their demands,” the woman said through a translator. In El Salvador, gangs run wild. According to the New York Times, an estimated 60,000 people belong to gangs in El Salvador, which is home to 6.5 million people. The result? The country saw 103 homicides per 100,000 residents in 2015. The United States saw five. Engaging the men, she said, “was not even worth it in the end.” The first time her husband put his foot down, the gang responded by taking hostage of the older of their two daughters. The next time, they took her husband. The family had negotiated to free the daughter. But there would be no such deal for her husband. “My husband called and told me to take care of his daughters,” she said. “He said he wasn’t going to be returning.” The line still open, she heard them take his phone. Police called the woman on the morning of Nov. 7, 2015 — just more than a day later — to deliver the bad news. She cried as she recalled how he was found: hands tied behind his back, two bullets in his forehead. On Nov. 10, 2015, after she had hosted a proper funeral for her husband, she packed up her things. It was time to head north. “I was scared of coming here,” she said, “but more scared of staying there with my daughters.” Read more at www.theday.com/local/20170712/pathways-road-to-lawful-residency-in-us/1. New London — When word spread of the hit-and-run in Waterford that killed a local man named Kim Weeks last month, many city business owners were unfamiliar with the name.
But when the man they knew only as Kenny, a guy who regularly dropped in to take out the trash or talk sports, stopped showing up, they came to a realization: The two were one and the same. “He was this type of guy where I didn’t know how much I liked him until this happened,” said Rich Harris, owner of Rich’s Auto Body on Truman Street. “I miss his visits, for sure.” It was about 7:33 a.m. Jan. 19 that police responded to the Crystal Mall for the report of an unconscious person there. Upon arrival, they discovered a deceased man lying on the ground between the roadway and the parking lot of the mall at 850 Route 85. Police, who later identified the man as 61-year-old Weeks, said their investigation into the death is continuing. For years, the tall, skinny black man with a sense of style followed a similar routine, according to Daddy Jack’s chef Jack Chaplin. It seemed to Chaplin that Weeks often would start his day with breakfast from the church at 66 Union St. — once First Congregational Church, now Engaging Heaven Church. He’d then saunter over to the auto shop on Truman Street, generally to chat about Yankees baseball, Harris said. After an afternoon slumber, Weeks would hit places like New London Ink, Daddy Jack’s and Exchange Bar and Grill, all located on Bank Street. He had an unspoken agreement of sorts with some of the folks there: If he performed a small task, they’d give him a little money. So he washed windows. Took out trash. Shoveled snow. Swept floors. “People might refer to him as a bum ... but he was far from a bum,” said Johnny Rivero, a tattoo artist at New London Ink. “He would work for what he got.” Read more at www.theday.com/policefirecourts/20170217/man-killed-in-waterford-hit-and-run-was-new-london-character. The first thing Jeanne Clark noticed was the little rubber bands popping up in strange places around her Norwichtown home.
It was around 2003, when the word “heroin” still triggered images of longtime drug users wandering the streets, trying to find the next high. Clark thought those rubber bands had fallen from the hair of one of her boys’ girlfriends. She never imagined they had fallen from tiny plastic bags holding a substance that would take both of her sons’ lives. One died before opioid use had reached epidemic proportions. The other died in 2016, one year after overdose deaths seemed to peak in Connecticut. - - - Growing up, Chase and Christopher, separated by just 22 months, were nearly inseparable. Both played baseball and hockey. Chase, the youngest, tried soccer, too. After high school, Christopher took business courses at Three Rivers Community College and entered into the field of carpentry. Chase went to Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston and got a bachelor’s degree in construction management before becoming a licensed arborist. In retrospect, one might point to Christopher’s minor run-ins with police — records show he was convicted of misdemeanor liquor and marijuana possession in separate incidents near the turn of the century — as a sign of the brewing problem. Clark wrote it off as typical youth experimentation. Both brothers were gainfully employed, and people always complimented her on her charming sons. But she saw changes when the two were together at her home. Once lovers of the outdoors, they’d stay inside while she labored in the garden. Once full of energy, they struggled to get off the couch. If Clark knew then what she knows now, perhaps she would have confronted them sooner. Instead, she didn’t learn they had turned from social OxyContin use to heroin until 2005, when Chase frantically woke her in the middle of the night in the midst of a drug-induced frenzy. Her first reaction was one of humiliation. "I was embarrassed to know that my children were using drugs," said the 63-year-old Clark, now a Noank resident. Read more at www.theday.com/local/20170128/2-sons-2-deaths-mother-reflects-on-opioid-crisis-toll. The day Kevin Crandall nearly died was May 31, 2005.
Now 60, Crandall remembers the sun shining on one side of the Stonington sky, a fast-moving storm rolling in over the water on the other. The longtime stonemason suggested to his work partner that they should pack up, even though he hadn’t seen any lightning. He remembers walking toward the truck, tools in hand, not wanting to tempt fate. Then, nothing. - - - The number of people who die after being hit by lightning has decreased dramatically since the National Weather Service began recording the statistic in 1940. Back then, upward of 400 people could die in a single year; last year, that number was 27. There are several reasons for that, according to John Jensenius, a lightning specialist with the National Weather Service. For one, he said, fewer small farmers are perched atop tractors in the middle of flat farmland during thunderstorms. Fewer homes have corded phones with a direct connection to the outdoors, too. And, because more people know CPR, fewer lightning strike victims are left helplessly waiting for first responders to arrive. That’s not to say, however, that fewer storms are producing cloud-to-ground lightning. Read more at http://www.theday.com/local/20160910/changed-in-flash-life-after-lightning-strike. Seventy-four-year-old Shin-Chia Tan doesn't remember hearing anyone scream when the packed bus heading to Mohegan Sun hit a guardrail and toppled onto a snowy Interstate 95 in February.
As the sound of blaring horns and squealing tires filled the air, he and the 54 others on the bus seemed to lose their voices, perhaps aware of how little control they had over the situation. Tan, a Flushing, N.Y., resident originally from Taiwan, was just one of at least 36 passengers injured Feb. 8 when the Dahlia Group Inc. bus flipped over in Madison. At least six of them were in critical condition for a period of time. A state police report confirms Tan's version of the story: Keyi Zhang, the 63-year-old driver from Flushing, lost control while merging from the right to the left lane, closing I-95 north for 4½ hours. An investigation by The Day shows that while Dahlia Group and other bus lines serving casinos repeatedly are cited for unsafe driving, vehicle maintenance and other violations — some at a higher rate than others — most of them continue to operate. Dahlia Group and its drivers have been cited with 38 violations — ranging from driving too fast to drinking while driving — since February 2014, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. By the safety administration's standards, the 33 violations racked up by Dahlia's New York branch — it also has one in Boston — mean 83 percent of motor carriers in the same category have better on-road safety performance than it does. The safety administration calculates an unsafe driving measure based on the number and severity of violations, the number of vehicles and the miles traveled by each vehicle. By far, Dahlia has the worst rating of the buses that travel regularly to Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods. Yet Dahlia continues to run as many as 14 buses between Mohegan Sun and Flushing each day, according to the website of VMC Travel Express, the agency that books buses including Dahlia. Mohegan Sun lists 20 bus companies and three booking agencies on its website for customers to use, under either "line runs" or "Asian line runs." Dahlia isn't listed, although VMC Travel Express is. Other agencies listed include I-Fun Entertainment and Oriental Travel LLC. The former books trips on buses owned by Cash World Tours Inc., whose rating with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is "conditional," which is similar to being on probation. The latter runs SOE Tour Inc. buses. On March 2, one of those buses burst into flames and filled the highway with thick black smoke while en route to Mohegan Sun from Boston. All 45 passengers escaped without injury. Read more at http://www.theday.com/local/20160326/13-casino-bus-not-always-bargain/1. For 48-year-old Kate, two things run in the family: nursing and addiction.
After overcoming alcohol and cocaine addiction in her early 20s to become a registered nurse in her late 20s, she thought she was in the clear. But within four years of getting her license, a downward spiral that went from a pelvic fracture to an ugly divorce found Kate sneaking into the waste medication closet of the nursing home where she worked, lifting oxycodone and Xanax. Kate agreed to share her story on the condition The Day maintains her anonymity. "It was kind of subtle," Kate said of the years leading up to when she was caught stealing drugs. "I never had the idea, 'well I think I'm going to end up being an addict,' but ultimately that's where it led." Now more than a year-and-a-half sober, Kate said people still are surprised when they hear her story, wondering how a nurse could wind up an addict. But Kate said the access nurses have, coupled with their mentality, should make it less than shocking. "In nursing, we're taught that medication solves problems," she said. "That's what we do. We change meds. We start meds. We stop meds. It's very much an ingrained idea in many nurses' thought processes. Even when I was using I was acutely aware of other nurses with similar problems — you know, it takes one to know one." It's hard to say just how many nurses are affected by substance abuse, according to Maureen Sullivan Dinnan, executive director of Health Assistance Intervention Education Network, or HAVEN. But, based on her experience with the confidential health network for medical professionals, she said nurses suffer substance abuse disorders at least at the same rate as the general population. According to a state Department of Public Health roster, 384 of about 62,063 registered nurses with active licenses, or 0.62 percent, have licenses that have been disciplined in the past or currently are suspended, restricted, on probation or facing charges. The roster doesn't specify what led to disciplinary action for those 384 nurses, but of the 266 individuals who have been sanctioned in the past five years, at least 57 percent underwent or are undergoing disciplinary action for a substance abuse-related case. Many of the nurses' records tell a similar story: They diverted a controlled substance — Vicodin, Percocet, Valium, Xanax, diazepam, oxycodone — from a medical center's stock or directly from a patient on one or more occasions and fudged records to cover it up. In one case, a nurse overdosed while on the job. Read more at http://www.theday.com/local/20160312/substance-abuse-nurses-arent-immune. |
ABOUTA selection of stories I wrote as a breaking news and police reporter for The Day in New London, Conn. Archives
July 2019
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