Connecticut home invasion survivor engaged
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A doctor whose wife and two daughters were killed in a violent home invasion has become engaged to a woman who volunteered at events organized by the foundation set up to honor their memories.
Dr. William Petit became engaged over the weekend to photographer Christine Paluf, but no wedding date was set, his friend and spokesman, Rick Healey, confirmed Wednesday.
The Hartford Courant first reported the engagement of the 55-year-old Petit to the 34-year-old Paluf, who Healey said volunteered at events of the Petit Family Foundation, which helps educate young people, improve the lives of those with chronic illnesses and protect those affected by violence.
During the 2007 invasion by two men at the Petit family home in Cheshire, a wealthy New Haven suburb, Petit was beaten with a baseball bat and tied up, but he escaped to a neighbor’s home. His wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, was killed, and their daughters, 17-year-old Hayley and 11-year-old Michaela, were left to die in a fire. His wife lived in Slippery Rock where she attended elementary school.
The two men, Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, are on death row for the killings. The men blamed each other for escalating the violence, but prosecutors said it took both of them to carry out the killings in a crime so gruesome that it evoked comparisons to Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood,” about the brutal murders of a Kansas farmer and his family.
