Police have arrested and charged a 26-year-old man with murder in the death of a 25-year-old Chebeague Island native in Bridgeport, Connecticut, last weekend.
Brandon Roberts
Brandon Roberts was taken into custody Friday at his father’s home in Shaker Heights, Ohio.
Working with Ohio police, officers from Bridgeport executed an early-morning arrest warrant and took Roberts into custody without incident, Bridgeport police Capt. Brian Fitzgerald said in a statement. Roberts faces extradition to Connecticut, and is charged with murder, felony murder, first-degree robbery, using a firearm in the commission of a felony and carrying a pistol without a permit in the death of Emily Todd.
Vicki Todd, who is married to Emily’s father, Stephen Todd, said in a brief phone interview Friday morning that police told the family that Roberts gave a full confession.
Todd’s body was found Sunday morning next to a municipal boat ramp in Bridgeport, about 40 miles from where she was living, in Bethel, Connecticut. Todd was a 10th-generation Chebeague Islander, her father said, and visited her large extended family there several times each year.
According to Stephen Todd and Bridgeport police, Emily Todd recently had met a man through an online dating site. Police and family members had said Thursday that the man was the focus of the police investigation, although neither the family nor police would identify the suspect by name before the arrest.
According to the Connecticut Post, Todd’s mother, who lives in Bethel, told investigators that Todd was dating a man named Brandon who was homeless and from Bridgeport, but who may have originally been from Ohio.
Stephen Todd said his daughter at one point gave the man money to get his car fixed in an attempt to get him to leave her alone.
“She, at some point, gave him $500 to fix his transmission and leave,” Todd said. “What we don’t know at this point, the night this happened, how they got in contact with each other, or how they met that night. There’s no record of him contacting her.”
After the relationship soured, Emily Todd went to Bridgeport police Nov. 30 to report that her boyfriend, Roberts, had threatened to shoot himself, according to the Connecticut Post, which viewed police reports prepared in support of the arrest warrant.
Todd described to police dispatchers the car Roberts was driving, gave his cellphone number, the fact that he had Ohio license plates and owned a gun.
When police made contact with Roberts via phone, he fled and a short car chased followed, but police broke off the pursuit because Roberts was driving erratically, according to the Connecticut Post.
By Dec. 8, Todd changed her cellphone number in an attempt to avoid Roberts.
Todd’s mother told police that on that same day, Emily’s debit card was used at an ATM after 11 p.m. in Trumbull to withdraw $400, and then 40 minutes later to withdraw $52 at a different ATM, the Connecticut Post reported.
Police, meanwhile, obtained surveillance footage showing Roberts behind the wheel of a white Kia sedan, the same type of car Todd drove, according to the Connecticut Post. Later, Todd’s Kia was found in the parking lot of a Stratford Hotel where Roberts had been staying with an uncle since Thanksgiving, according to the Connecticut Post.
According to police, Roberts left the hotel without saying goodbye to the uncle and when the uncle called Roberts to tell him the police were looking for him, Roberts said, “I’m sorry Unc,” according to the Connecticut Post.
Matt Byrne can be contacted at 791-6303 or at:
mbyrne@pressherald.com
Twitter: MattByrnePPH
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
