Police searching for student on the run after 'killing two people'

Authorities are searching for an ‘armed and dangerous’ student suspected of killing a 62-year-old man and his 23-year-old friend.

A tri-state manhunt is underway for Peter Manfredonia, a 23-year-old student at the University of Connecticut, who is believed to be armed and on the run in a stolen car in either Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Police said Manfredonia killed Ted DeMers, 62, in Willington on Friday. DeMers’s wife, Cynthia DeMers, told The Hartford Courant that her husband and another man were attacked after they found Manfredonia walking on a rode and offered him a ride to his motorcycle.

‘It could have been anybody who offered him a ride. It could have been any of my neighbors’ husbands. It just happened to be mine,’ she said.

DeMers was rushed to a local hospital after the attack, but he was later pronounced dead. It is unclear how he was killed, but police said the other man suffered wounds from either a sword or a machete.

Days later, police were called to a home in Willington on early Sunday morning after a man reported that he had been held hostage by Manfredonia, who fled with food, guns and the man’s truck. The truck was found abandoned hours later at Osbornedale State Park. The homeowner was reportedly not hurt during the incident.

Authorities then went to a home in Derby, Connecticut where an acquaintance of Manfredonia lived. That person, identified as 23-year-old Nicholas Eisele, was found dead at the home.

Police were still for Manfredonia on Monday morning and are warning that he is armed and dangerous and could be in the area of Osbornedale State Park, Derby.

The University of Connecticut said Manfredonia was not living on campus at the time of the Willington attack.

‘The university expresses its deepest, most heartfelt sympathies to the victims and their families in this horrible, incomprehensible tragedy. They are all in our thoughts,’ university spokesperson Stephanie Reitz said.

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