News

Warrant: HVAC Contractor’s Refund Check Bounced

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New Canaan Police on Nov. 6 arrested a 61-year-old Woodbury man by warrant after he failed to do a contracted home job and then bounced a returned refund check, documents show. Authorities here learned about the contractor when a local homeowner came to New Canaan Police Department headquarters on a Monday afternoon in February saying he’d hired the man—Don Zemo of Prime Mechanical LLC—to do HVAC work on his house in October 2024, according to an arrest warrant application obtained by NewCanaanite.com through a public records request. The man “stated that he paid Zemo a $5,800 deposit, which was half the cost of the job,” according to the affidavit of NCPD Officer Giancarlo Vincenzi, who applied for an arrest warrant signed by state Superior Court Judge John Blawie. None of the HVAC work was ever done, the application said.

News

Warrant: Man, 22, Steals Checks from Local Restaurant

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New Canaan Police on Oct. 31 arrested a 22-year-old Bronx, N.Y. man by warrant in connection with the theft of payroll checks from a newly opened restaurant last year. On June 6, 2024, Officer Nicole Vartuli met with the manager of Blackbird on Elm Street regarding 22 checks that had been stolen in March, with six of them already cashed, according to court documents obtained by NewCanaanite.com through a public records request. Vartuli learned from the manager that 22 physical payroll checks totaling about $17,000 had been stolen, with the six cashed checks totaling about $7,250, according to an arrest warrant application filed by Vartuli and signed by a state Superior Court judge. The restaurant’s automated payroll checks were supposed to be “hand-delivered to an employee on site” on March 29, the manager told police, but “it was possible that nobody was there to receive the payroll … and they were left outside.”

Vartuli examined the checks and found that “each check endorsement had the employee’s signatures forged above the suspect’s signature,” the arrest warrant application said.

News

DUI Warrant: Woman in Car Crash Had Elevated Blood-Alcohol Level

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New Canaan Police on Nov. 1 arrested a 42-year-old Stamford woman by warrant in connection with a single-car crash on White Oak Shade Road seven years ago, records show. Police obtained a state Superior Court Judge Stephanie McLaughlin’s signature on the warrant in November 2018, just a few weeks after the crash. According to an arrest warrant application filed by New Canaan Police Officer Matthew Blank and obtained by NewCanaanite.com through a public records request, the woman crashed in the area of 105 White Oak Shade Road (just north of Overlook Drive) around 1:16 a.m. on Oct. 21, 2018, a Sunday. 

Arriving, Blank and other NCPD officers found that a vehicle had crossed the double-yellow line while traveling southbound and then crossed all the way across the northbound lane and struck a telephone pole that snapped, the arrest warrant application said.

Animal 411

New Canaan Police Impound 10 Cats from Seminary Street Home

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New Canaan Police last week impounded 10 neglected cats from a Seminary Street home where the animals’ owner told authorities that kittens had died, records show. At midday on Oct. 27, a Monday, the owner of the two-family home and one tenant came to police to report “a large number of cats” living in poor conditions at the rental property, according to an incident report obtained by NewCanaanite.com through a public records request. There were “cat feces all over the property inside and outside” and “the cats have fleas,” the property owner told police, according to the incident report, filed by Officer Sean Godejohn, head of the New Canaan Police Department’s Animal Control section. There’s “a very strong cat urine smell inside the apartment,” the owner told police, and the neighbor said “he can smell the cat urine from inside his apartment next door,” Godejohn wrote in the report.

News

New Canaan Man, 20, Charged in Mother’s Murder

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Police late Saturday charged a 20-year-old New Canaan man with the murder of his own mother, officials say. At about 10:36 p.m., officers were dispatched to the area of South Avenue and Gerdes Road on a report of a man yelling from the woods, police said. While they were responding, New Canaan Police dispatch received a 9-1-1 call from a man at a Gerdes Road home stating that he had killed his mother, according to a police report. Arriving, officers identified the suspect as Sebastian Van Stockum, the report said. Police and New Canaan EMS performed life-saving measures for the victim, who was pronounced dead at the scene, it said.