Gas blast at Connecticut power plant kills at least 5

MIDDLETOWN, Conn. – An explosion that sounded like a sonic boom blew out walls of an unfinished power plant and set off a fire during a test of natural gas lines Sunday, killing at least five workers and injuring a dozen or more.

The explosion at the Kleen Energy Systems plant in Middletown, about 20 miles south of Hartford, could be heard and felt for miles.

Deputy Fire Marshal Al Santostefano told The Associated Press on Sunday night that no one was known to be missing amid the rubble from the damaged plant. Still, crews planned to spend all night going through debris in case there were any more victims. The cause of the gas explosion was unknown, and the investigation was to begin Monday morning, he said.

The explosion left huge pieces of metal that once encased the plant peeling off its sides. A large swath of the structure was blackened and surrounded by debris, but the building, its roof and its two smokestacks were still standing. Rescue crews had set up several tents alongside the site, which is a few miles from Wesleyan University on a wooded and hilly 137-acre parcel of land overlooking the Connecticut River.

The explosion happened around 11:15 a.m., Santostefano said. Mayor Sebastian Giuliano heard the blast while leaving church.

"It felt almost like a sonic boom," Giuliano said at an evening news conference.

Santostefano said 50 to 60 people were in the area at the time of the explosion, and multiple contractors were working on the project, making it difficult to quickly account for everyone.

One of those killed was Raymond Dobratz, a 58-year-old plumber from Old Saybrook, said his son, Erik Dobratz, who called the elder man "a great dad."

The 620-megawatt plant, which was almost complete, is being built to produce energy primarily using natural gas. Santostefano said workers for the construction company, O&G Industries, were purging the gas line when the explosion occurred.

Lynn Hawley, of Hartland, Conn., told The Associated Press that her son, Brian Hawley, 36, is a pipefitter at the plant. He called her from his cell phone to say he was being rushed to Middlesex Hospital.

"He really couldn't say what happened to him," she said. "He was in a lot of pain, and they got him into surgery as quickly as possible."

She said he had a broken leg and was expected to survive.

Officials had not released the conditions of the other injured people by Sunday evening, although they said at least a dozen people had injuries ranging from minor to very serious.

The thundering blast shook houses for miles.

"I felt the house shake. I thought a tree fell on the house," Middletown resident Steve Clark said.

Barrett Robbins-Pianka, who lives about a mile away and has monitored the project for years, said she was running outside and heard what she called "a tremendous boom."

"I thought it might be some test or something, but it was really loud, a definite explosion," she said.

Work on the plant was 95 percent complete, the mayor said.

Kleen Energy Systems LLC began construction on it in February 2008. It had signed a capacity deal with Connecticut Light and Power for the electricity produced by the plant, which was scheduled to be completed by mid-2010.

The company is run by former Middletown City Councilman William Corvo. A message left at Corvo's home was not returned Sunday. Calls to Gordon Holk, general manager of Power Plant Management Services, which has a contract to manage the plant, also weren't returned.

Energy Investors Funds, a private equity fund that indirectly owns a majority share in the power plant, said it is fully cooperating with authorities investigating the explosion. In a written statement, the company offered sympathy and concern and said it would release more information on the explosion as it becomes available.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell visited the scene Sunday and announced late in the day that the state had imposed a temporary no-fly zone for a three-mile radius around the site to ensure that the safety of the search and rescue workers would not be jeopardized. The restrictions were put in place until Monday evening.

The state's Emergency Operations Center in Hartford also was activated, and the Department of Public Health was called to provide tents at the scene for shelter and medical triage.

Daniel Horowitz, a spokesman with the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, said the agency is mobilizing an investigation team from Colorado and hopes to have the workers on the scene Monday.

Plants powered by natural gas are taking on a much larger role in generating electricity for the U.S. Gas emits about half the greenhouse gases of coal-fired plants and new technology has allowed natural gas companies to begin to unlock gas supplies that could total more than 100 years at current usage levels.

Natural gas is used to make about a fifth of the nation's electricity.

Safety board investigators have done extensive work on the issue of gas line purging since an explosion last year at a Slim Jim factory in North Carolina killed four people. They've identified other explosions caused by workers who were unsafely venting gas lines inside buildings.

The board voted last week to recommend that national and international code writers strengthen their guidelines to require outdoor venting of gas lines or an approved safety plan to do it indoors.

In February 2009, an explosion at a We Energies coal-fired power plant near Milwaukee burned six workers. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is still investigating.

In November 2007, an explosion at a Dominion Virginia Power coal-fired plant in Massachusetts killed three workers, and in January 2007 one worker and nine others were injured at an American Electric Power plant of the same type in Beverly, Ohio.

Police Seek DNA From Yale Worker in Death of Student

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut (CNN) -- Police said Tuesday night they have a Yale University employee in custody in connection with the killing of Yale student Annie Le.

A judge has issued a search warrant and a body warrant on Raymond Clark, 24, of Middletown, police said.

The body warrant allows police to collect DNA from Clark, who will be arrested if he does not comply but will be released if he does, police said.

Le's body was found Sunday in a wall of an off-campus medical research building, police said.

Clark is a lab technician at Yale, police said at a news conference Tuesday night.

Earlier Tuesday, a senior police official told CNN that investigators have interviewed more than 200 people in the case.

The official also disputed Yale University President Richard Levin, who had indicated that the suspect pool would be a "limited number" of people who had been in the basement the day Le disappeared.

"We know everyone that was in the basement ... and we passed that on to police," Levin said. "There is an abundance of evidence."

But the police official, whom CNN is not naming because of the sensitive nature of the ongoing investigation, said investigators believe dozens of people could have had access to that area of the building.

Le, 24, disappeared September 8. She was last seen on surveillance video as she entered the four-story lab at 10 Amistad Street, about 10 blocks from the main campus. After going over hours of tapes, authorities said they had not found images of her leaving the building.

The police official said that investigators were unlikely to make any arrest until DNA evidence is returned from analysis and that the probe could take days.

Police have not released information on what DNA evidence may have been found, although investigators said earlier that bloody clothing was found hidden above tiles in a drop ceiling in another part of the building.

Authorities have not described the clothes that were found, nor said to whom they might have belonged. Teams of investigators at a Connecticut State Police lab worked through the weekend processing and examining the bloodstained clothes.

But Thomas Kaplan, editor in chief of the Yale Daily News, said a Yale police official told the paper that the clothes were not what Le was wearing when she entered the building.

On Sunday, New Haven Police spokesman Joe Avery said that Le's killing was not a random act but would not elaborate.

Meanwhile, a home in Middletown, Connecticut -- believed to be the home of a Yale technician -- was the scene of a large police presence Tuesday. Police, however, would not say whether their presence at the home was related to their investigation of Le's death.

Le, a graduate student in Yale's pharmacology program, was to have been married Sunday on New York's Long Island to Jonathan Widawsky, a graduate student at Columbia University.

Her friend Vanessa Flores said Le was overjoyed about getting married.

"She was just so excited about this wedding and everything from, you know, her flowers to her wedding dress and just certain details about it," Flores told HLN's Nancy Grace. "We talked about this back in 2008. She was already thinking about the weather, whether June, July was going to be too hot, August, so September, would it be nice?"

Le was from Placerville, California, and seemed to have been well aware of the risks of crime in a university town. In February, she compared crime and safety at Yale with other Ivy League schools for a piece for B magazine, published by the medical school.

Among the tips she offered: Keep a minimum amount on your person. When she walked over to the research building on September 8, she left her purse, credit cards and cell phone in her office.

Notebook's chilling entry: 'Kill Johanna'

MIDDLETOWN, Connecticut (CNN) -- Police investigating the slaying of Wesleyan University junior Johanna Justin-Jinich discovered a composition notebook with a chilling entry, "Kill Johanna. She must Die," an arrest affidavit said.

The notebook is believed to belong to murder suspect Stephen Morgan, the affidavit said.

The entry is dated May 6 at 11 a.m., about two hours before Justin-Jinich, 21, was shot and killed at a Middletown bookstore near the Wesleyan University campus.

The entry also mentioned "seeing all of the beautiful and smart people at wes," adding, "I think it okay to kill Jews and go on killing spree at this school," the arrest affidavit quoted the composition book as saying.

Police discovered the composition book in a computer bag in the basement of Broad Street Books near a laptop computer that listed Morgan as its administrator.

The arrest affidavit was made public as Morgan, 29, appeared Friday morning in a Connecticut courtroom for a brief arraignment. His attorney, Richard Brown, said his client will plead not guilty to first-degree murder. Brown said Morgan's parents are "very surprised" that their son is accused of murder, saying it is inconsistent with the person they know.

Morgan stood silently in a blue jumpsuit as his bond was increased to $15 million. Afterward, his sister cried and was comforted by family.

Police launched a nationwide search for Morgan after Wednesday's shooting, but he turned himself in at the nearby Meriden Police Department at 9:14 p.m. Thursday and was transferred to Middletown.

Police said their searches also turned up a brown wig, eyeglasses, a dark baseball cap, a T-shirt, a laptop and a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun.

Police spoke briefly to Morgan immediately after the shooting, the arrest warrant said. He gave his name and a Colorado address.

Employees who were in the bookstore's basement said they heard a loud noise coming from the conveyor belt that is used to transport stock between the basement and the first floor.

Steven Hebenstriet, 27, said he saw a man do a somersault and then jump off the conveyor belt, the affidavit said. The man approached Hebenstriet, pointed a handgun at him, and said, "Don't say anything or I'll shoot," according to the affidavit.

Another witness, identified in the affidavit as Susan Gerdhart, 22, told police she heard loud popping sounds as she was paying for a salad in the Red & Black Cafe, in Broad Street Books.

Gerdhart told police she turned and saw smoke in the air and bullet casings on the ground. "She faced the suspect and saw him fire three more shots. Gerdhart noticed that the female behind the counter was no longer standing and the suspect was standing over the counter with a gun in his hand pointed at the floor," the affidavit said.

Gerdhart said she saw the suspect run out of the cafe through an opening behind the counter. When police arrived, Justin-Jinich was "moaning and shaking" on the floor behind the sales counter, the affidavit said, adding that she died later at Middlesex Hospital from "several gunshot wounds."

Morgan was one of several people who gathered Wednesday afternoon outside the bookstore cafe after Justin-Jinich was shot to death, a police source told CNN. Morgan gave his name to investigators, the source said.

At that early stage of the investigation, the source said, police had no reason to suspect Morgan.

Morgan's sister had urged him to turn himself in.

"Steve, turn yourself in right now to any law-enforcement agency, wherever you are, to avoid any further bloodshed," Diana Morgan said through the news media. "We love you, we will support you in every way, and we don't want anyone else to get hurt."

Police warned Thursday that Morgan might have been targeting Wesleyan University and the town's Jewish residents.

The slain Wesleyan student was Jewish, according to the Middletown mayor, but there was another connection between her and her alleged killer, authorities said.

In July 2007, the woman filed a harassment complaint against Morgan while the two were taking the same six-week summer course at New York University, school spokesman John Beckman told CNN.

The complaint, in which Justin-Jinich said she was receiving harassing e-mails and phone calls from Morgan, was filed with the university's public safety department toward the end of the course, Beckman said.

The public safety department brought in the New York Police department and, after conversations with Morgan and Justin-Jinich, the woman declined to follow up or press charges, Beckman said.

Beckman said the two were not living in the same student residence house during the course. Additional details were not immediately available.

Another law enforcement source told CNN that in one of the e-mails sent to Justin-Jinich, Morgan wrote, "You're going to have a lot more problems down the road if you can't take any (expletive) criticism, Johanna."

Middletown Mayor Sebastian Giuliano said the connection between Morgan and Justin-Jinich may "go back to Colorado." No further details were available. Watch how the suspect and victim knew each other »

Middletown is a central Connecticut city with a population of about 48,000.