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Feds: 36-Year-Old Man Pleads Guilty to Distribution of Child Pornography 

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A 36-year-old man indicted last fall for posting nude videos of a New Canaan girl on a popular video-sharing service pleaded guilty Monday to distribution of child pornography, according to the U.S. Department of Justice . 

Brian Grinnell of Lakewood, Ohio, faces five to 20 years in prison and will be sentenced in July, according to a press release from the Connecticut District of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. In March 2020, he posed as a 15-year-old girl and met the girl, who was under age 12 at the time, on Omegle, according to court documents cited in the release. 

“Shortly thereafter, he began communicating with the minor victim on Snapchat,” it said. “Grinnell told the minor victim to take sexually explicit photos and videos of herself and send them to Grinnell over Snapchat. After the minor victim began to feel threatened by Grinnell, she unfriended and blocked Grinnell’s account.”

Grinnell then threatened to post a video of the minor victim naked on TikTok, he told a friend of the girl’s through the app, unless she got in touch with him. When that friend (also a minor) begged him not to, Grinnell said, “I want a video of you begging me to not put them up. And you have to be topless in the video.

News

DUI Arrest: New Canaan Woman, 41, Tests at Nearly Three Times Legal Limit

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Police on Sunday morning arrested a 41-year-old New Canaan woman by warrant and charged her with driving under the influence and evading responsibility. The warrant stems from a midday crash on Feb. 20 in the area of East Maple Street, in which her vehicle struck concrete stairs and a patio stair railing, according to a police report. During an investigation, police obtained a search warrant for blood results in order to determine the woman’s blood-alcohol level, the report said. She had a blood-alcohol level of .23, the report said, compared to a legal limit of .08. 

Police served the arrest warrant on the woman at her Hoyt Street home. 

She was released on $250 bond and scheduled to appear April 29 in state Superior Court.

Around Town

May Fair 2021 Canceled Due to COVID-19 Pandemic

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May Fair has been canceled this year due to the pandemic, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church officials said. Though the town has made “outstanding progress” on vaccinating residents and the state is permitting fairs to operate at 50% capacity, “we carefully discerned that it is still too early to attempt such a large, multi-faceted gathering,” according to a letter published by St. Mark’s Senior Warden Stan Twardy, Junior Warden Mark Thorsheim and event Chairman George Wright. “We believe that the joyful spirit of May Fair is rooted in the joyful Spirit of God,” the letter said.

Town Seeing Strong Demand for Waveny Pool Passes in 2021

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Town officials say they’re seeing strong early demand for passes to Waveny Pool for the 2021 season. In the first 10 days of sales, the town sold 165 resident family, 15 senior and 20 individual passes for the popular facility, according to Recreation Director Steve Benko. “So people are looking forward to the pool season,” Benko told members of the Parks & Recreation Commission during their April 14 meeting, held via videoconference. State officials are expected to make an announcement this week regarding summer activities, including guidance on capacity limits for facilities such as Waveny Pool, he said. “Everybody is anxiously waiting to see what the [state Department of Economic and Community Development] and the [Department of Public Health] are going to to do for summer activities,” Benko said.

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‘It’s Frustrating’: Town Works With Utility Co. Amid Management Changes and Natural Gas Project

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Town officials say that in the face of changes in project management, they’re focused on working with utility company officials amid the multiyear natural gas installation in New Canaan. In recent weeks, municipal officials have received the most complaints about the state of Main Street and Gower Road, two heavily traveled roads affected by the installation, according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann. 

“So we are asking them to expedite that,” Mann told members of the Selectmen’s Advisory Committee on Buildings and Infrastructure during their April 12 meeting, held via videoconference. 

“The unfortunate thing is that Eversource went through a management change, so our longtime project manager Charlie Frangis, who did a fantastic job ushering this project in the past two years or so—he was instrumental in getting rid of Ferreira and bringing in Burns—he has been relocated to their central or northern district, and we have five or six new managers down here taking over the project, unfortunately.”

The comments came during an update to the committee on the status of the natural gas project. 

The long-planned installation of natural gas lines through downtown New Canaan was thrown off by the COVID-19 pandemic. The town is in the fourth year of the Eversource-led expansion, which brought service to 30 roads in 2018 and extended an additional five miles in 2019. Another five miles had been planned for 2020 when the pandemic set in, and town officials have been pushing for Eversource to continue the project, including into the downtown. 

Municipal officials have called for understanding from residents as multiple infrastructure projects get underway this spring and summer, including a natural gas line on Main Street between East and Locust Avenues, and then down Locust to Forest Street. The town is “still working with them on upper Elm Street, Grove Street, Pine Street—that area,” Mann said. 

“And then with the new managers, I am trying to accommodate our final restoration of the roads that are slated for this year, taking into account that they lost last year and try to make sure that everyone who wants service gets service,” he said.