UConn puncher pleads guilty, faces 10 years

The man accused of fatally punching a University of Connecticut student during Spring Weekend 2010 pleaded no contest to manslaughter charg­es as part of a plea arrangement Friday (July 1) in Rockville Superior Court.

Edi Rapo, 20, of East Hartford, had been facing charges of second-degree manslaughter, tampering with physical evidence, second-degree breach of peace, second-degree issuing a false statement and second-degree forgery.

He was originally offered a plea deal on May 13, but his case was continued to June 3 and again to June 10 to give him time to consider the deal. After the June 10 appear­ance, Rapo’s case was continued to Friday. According to Rockville Superior Court officials, Rapo’s full sentence will be 10 years, suspended after five-and-a-half years.

He will be on probation for five years under the agreement.

His sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 9, court officials said.

Rapo’s lawyer, William Gerace, said in early June he asked for the judge to become involved in the talks, adding he felt the pro­posed sentencing range was too broad.

Gerace could not be reached for com­ment Friday.

Rapo had been accused of fatally punch­ing UConn junior Jafar Karzoun, of Milford, in an altercation April 23, 2010, during Spring Weekend at UConn.

According to court documents, Rapo knocked Karzoun, a management informa­tion systems major, unconscious after he punched him in the face, at which point Karzoun fell to the ground and hit his head.

State police said they found Karzoun unconscious when they responded to a report of an altercation at a pizza restaurant on North Eagleville Road at 1:18 a.m.

Karzoun was first taken to Windham Community Memorial Hospital and was then flown by Life Star helicopter to Hartford Hospital, where he died May 1, 2010.

Karzoun’s family announced in January their intentions to sue the university, claim­ing it failed to protect Karzoun.

According to the Connecticut Post in early June, Donald Altschuler, the Karzouns’ lawyer, said the family is aware of the terms of the plea deal and supports the offer.

Altschuler could not be reached for com­ment Friday.

In a letter to UConn, the Karzouns said UConn failed to maintain safety for its students during Spring Weekend.

After Karzoun’s death, UConn took addi­tional steps to address Spring Weekend, which is not sanctioned by the university.

Former President Michael Hogan put together a task force in May 2010, and the task force issued a report in January recommending ways to control Spring Weekend.

The Undergraduate Student Government did not agree to the task force’s recom­mendation for a one-year moratorium, but town and UConn officials credit many of the recommendations for the down-sized Spring Weekend this April, which also coincided with Easter.

Posted 7-6-2011

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E.O.Smith tennis courts get $35,000

The recon­struction of the E.O. Smith High School tennis courts will now have a little help from the United States Tennis Association.

Mansfield, a member of the USTA, recently received a $35,000 grant from the organization.

Parks and Recreation Director Curt Vincente said it will go to the E.O. Smith project.

Mansfield is one of the three sending towns, along with Ashford and Willington, sending high school students to E.O. Smith.

Vincente told the town council, in a memo dated June 21, that the grant will help cover the cost of adding a seventh court in the place of the existing basketball court at the high school.

It will also help with the costs of installing conduits for outdoor lighting, which might be installed in the future, and adding blended lines.

Blended lines are boundary lines that are a similar color to the playing surface itself and create a smaller court for younger players without distracting adults.

Vincente said the parks and recreation department plans to expand its current youth tennis instructional program by “utiliz­ing these smaller sided courts.”

The reconstruction of the tennis courts is part of a $2.17 million project to also reconstruct the basketball court and install a new track and synthetic turf field.

School officials broke ground on the project in May and are con­fident the project will completed before the school year starts in August.

The timeline calls for the recon­struction of the courts in July, followed by the installation of the new track in August.

The tennis and basketball courts had been included in the project because the previous courts could no longer be repaired.

School officials also said the old track had become dangerous and had not been in use, while the field was becoming difficult to maintain and impact physical education classes. The new track will have a different shape from the current track to allow for a regulation soccer field inside, and will increase from six lanes to eight. The synthetic field, mean­while, will allow the school’s ath­letic teams and physical education classes to use the same field right behind the school daily.

Posted 7-6-2011

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Attention surprises 'Nine Lives' author

When E.O. Smith High School graduate Liz Braswell saw advertisements displaying the name of one of her book series and heard people express excitement, it was a new experience.

Braswell said she has received fan mail before but authors do not typically get the level of public exposure or response she has received since ABC Family debuted its TV show “The Nine Lives of Chloe King,” based on her book series of the same name, two weeks ago.

“It’s crazy, it’s really bizarre,” she said, adding she overhears people talking about the show and her books in public.

The three books have been released together and have reached the New York Times Best Sellers List for children’s paperbacks.

Braswell wrote the three-volume series, which was originally released in 2004, under the pen name Celia Thomson.

The series is about Chloe King’s life as an everyday teenager with “cat-like superwoman powers,” according to its web site.

She said ABC Family, which airs the show at 9 p.m. on Tuesdays, contacted her in January about turning the show into a television series.

She said the fact some of her literary work was becoming a TV show “took sev­eral months to sink in,” but soon noticed the amount of support ABC Family was put­ting behind the show.

“The amount of mar­keting ABC has put into it is insane,” said Braswell, who now lives in North Brooklyn, N.Y., and has even seen ads placed on public buses.

Braswell was born in England but grew up in Mansfield and graduated from E.O. Smith in 1989 before going to Brown University to focus on Egyptology, or the study of Egypt.

She also had in interest in com­puters and decided when she graduated to work as a video game producer until 2002.

But she also said she has always had a love for reading and writing, never giving up writing during her time as a video game producer.

“As soon as I learned how to write, I’ve written stories,” she said.

Braswell got her first book contract in 2002 on the exact same day she was laid off from her job as a game producer.

“It was great, I got to switch gears imme­diately,” she said, although she admitted she sometimes misses the gaming industry.

Braswell said she had an outline and a few chapters of her first book completed when she got the contract, but it took her nine more months to write the book.

It also took a few months for editing and other work before her first book “Snow,” written under the pen name Tracy Lynn, was released in 2003.

She was also one of a team of writers, who shared the pen name Rob Kidd, who wrote a series of books based on the character Jack Sparrow from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie series.

Braswell said she is often working on multiple books at one time, some of which take longer to complete than others.

“It’s not easy. You don’t go into (writing) because it’s easy,” she said, adding she has been working on one book for 10 years.

She said the “biggest misconception” other people have about writing is the amount of work that actually goes into writing a book.

Braswell, who has two children, said she also sometimes needs to find the time to write, but finds it rewarding when she does. “It’s both refreshing and it’s hard,” she said.

Braswell’s work tends to target young adults, a group she said is “much more accepting” of new ideas, while authors targeting adults often specialize in one genre.

“At that age, kids just want to read anything and everything,” she said, adding she first fell in love with reading as a teenager.

Braswell said she prefers to write about fan­tasy and the supernatural, but she has also writ­ten about other topics.

And while the ABC Family TV series has sparked a new level of interest in her work, suc­cess is nothing new for Braswell.

“The Stolen” and “The Fallen,” both part of the Chloe King series, were named American Library Association Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Readers in 2005.

“The Fallen” was also named one of the New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age.

Braswell also said she has always received fan mail, and added it is “humbling” to hear positive feedback from fans after spending so much time alone developing her characters.

“I always get a little embarrassed,” she said.

Posted 7-5-2011

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