Police Talk To Morgan After Wesleyan Homicide, None Suspect Him

Puorro testified in Superior Court, where Morgan, 32, is being tried before a three-judge panel on charges of murder, intimidation based on bigotry or bias and carrying a pistol without a permit. His lawyers, Richard Brown and John Maxwell, say their client was mentally ill at the time of the crime.Puorro and Lt. Christopher Lavoie were training nearby with other members of the Middletown Police Department's SWAT team on the day of the homicide, May 6, 2009. They responded to the report of a shooting in "under a minute," Lavoie estimated.When Lavoie and Puorro arrived at the bookstore, they were told the basement hadn't been checked for the shooter, so they went downstairs. The store's surveillance cameras captured images of them on the lower level of the store, dressed in military-style camouflage and carrying guns.They pointed their guns at two men, ordering them to put their hands up. One man was wearing a blue shirt, and the other — who the state says was Morgan — was wearing Remy hair a red shirt, according to testimony.The officers made the men lift up their shirts to show they had no weapons, and also made them spin around so they could be checked from behind, Lavoie testified. The man in the red shirt "didn't appear to be overly nervous or excited," he said.He also didn't fit the description of the gunman, he said. The shooter had been described as having long, brown hair and wearing a black shirt; the man with the red shirt on was balding.The state claims that Morgan was wearing a disguise when he shot Justin-Jinich, and that he escaped down a conveyor belt to the basement, where he gradually shed a wig, a sweatshirt and other items.Even after finding a dark, long-haired wig on the floor, Puorro still didn't suspect the man in the red shirt, he testified.The SWAT officers' attention turned to a storage area that hadn't been checked, which Lavoie Weaving hair said appeared to have "a lot of places to hide." Thinking the two men in the basement might be students or employees, they asked them if they knew anything about the layout of the building, but neither could help, they testified.Lavoie and Puorro sent the two men upstairs, where Sgt. William Porter, then a patrol officer, asked them more questions.Porter testified that Morgan said he was in a stairwell at the time of the shooting. Morgan showed a photo identification from Colorado and was taken outside with the man in the blue shirt and three women "to be further identified," said Porter.Morgan disappeared that day and wasn't found until the next night, when police used other information they developed to track him to Meriden. When Morgan was taken to the Middletown Police Department, Lavoie realized who he was, he said."I immediately Hair weaving recognized him from the bookstore," he testified.Margaret McFee, one of the women who was led out of the bookstore for more questioning, testified that Morgan was "very quiet and subdued." He looked down and did not make eye contact, she said.She had seen a man wearing a Cleveland Indian baseball cap outside the store before the shooting, she testified. But when prosecutor Timothy Liston asked her if she made a connection between that man and the hatless man in the red shirt, she said no.Another witness, Sarah Svennungsen, said she was working in the basement shipping and receiving office the day of the shooting. She and co-workers heard loud noises, she said, and "we assumed they were the boxes coming from the loading dock," she said.Then she said she saw "a person rolling down the conveyor belt," she testified. The steeply sloping belt leads from the bookstore café where Justin-Jinich was shot to the basement."I thought at first it was a prank because of the tumbling action," Svennungsen said.After rolling all the way down the belt, a man pointed a gun at her and her co-workers and said, " 'Don't say a word or I'll [expletive] shoot you,'" she testified.He left through some nearby double doors, she said."We were speechless," she said.Testimony is scheduled to continue Friday at 11 a.m.Courant Staff Writer Hilda Muñoz contributed to this report.