Pan Knew Murder Victim’s Fiancee; North Haven Chief Defends Letting Him Go; $5K Reward Posted

This story confirms what the Yale Daily News reported yesterday afternoon -- that Mr. Pan and Ms. Perry knew each other at MIT and were facebook.com friends. Amazing that a campus newspaper scooped the entire journalism world on this story, including the NYT, Boston Herald and others.

The North Haven police discovered that the car Pan was driving which was stuck on a railroad track was registered in someone else's name and didn't bother to determine whether the car was stolen? The nearby murder and a description (color) of the car was not on police radio at the time? I think there is a lot more explaining to do here. Hopefully Mr. Pan will be arrested without incident so that letting him go won't come back to haunt the North Haven police department.

This is a tragic story. I expect it will become more convoluted as details surface. I hope they catch him.

This makes no sense:

Pan was last seen in the early morning hours on Feb. 11 driving with family members in Brookhaven or Duluth, Georgia. According to family

These towns are 16 miles apart and if you saw the guy you should be able to remember which town you were in.

This seems a bit intrusive, posting pictures of the victim's fiancé without her permission. Even if the photos were otherwise public, we should give her time to grieve privately rather than turning the NHI into the National Enquirer.

So a guy stranded in a way off the beaten path junkyard late at night in a car that isn't registered to his name isn't suspicious?

I hope Ms. Perry has protection around her, in case this is a stalker type situation. Let's hope he's caught soon and doesn't return to New Haven.

Oh, so cops DID run the plate and it was NOT listed as stolen at the time. I was told by multiple commenters on the other article that if NoHPD had just run the plates it would have been stolen and this would have been a closed case.

You'd think the commenters who weren't there would maybe have learned to wait til they have all the facts to chime in and criticize the police, but nope.

Having a murder in a neighboring town is not grounds to detain everyone in a dark SUV. Its easy as hell to mess up getting on 91 coming from Universal Drive. Not that hard to believe that someone, especially with out of state plates, would end up at the end of Universal by Sims by mistake. People drive cars registered to relatives, friends all the time. When dealing with immigrants it is hard to detect "suspicious" behavior because behaviors that are "out of the norm" may just be due to cultural differences in speech patterns/mannerisms, etc.

You weren't there, you don't know what of the investigative steps that cops took (at least which of the steps they have left after the "police accountability" bill handcuffed them).

Imagine if this had been a legitimately lost young person of color driving his uncles car with permission. You all would be outraged if police shook him down and detained him indefinitely because there was a murder in another town. The vision we're being given for policing in Connecticut is that suspicious person calls should hardly be investigated at all, or assumed to be a mental health issue and handled by a social worker. Elections have consequences. Police did exactly what they are being asked to do. Please remember this case next time there is a proposal that looks to change policing.

[Paul: There is no basis for stating the police ran the plates at the time of the stop. The chief did not say that. I agree there are many important facts we do not know yet.]

@robn: Agreed. Looking at satellite maps, the railroad tracks are pretty far into the property. ElmCityLover mentioned in a previous article that the police accountability bill would prevent a vehicle search, but failed to mention the provision that that only applied for routine traffic stops. I would think this may be considered trespassing at the least, but I don't want to speculate.

Elmcitylover:

Glenn's email stated the vehicle was "checked and found properly registered". How does one determine a vehicle is "properly registered" without running the plates. Also, you know damn well if that was a young black male driver in the same exact situation there is no way on God's green earth they would have been let go without verifying the owner of the car gave them permission to use it.

breakingbad23: The article says they ran the plates, and at the time they did, the vehicle was not stolen. Massachusetts later called them to tell them it had been reported stolen because Mass. notice the earlier inquiry from North Haven.
Robn: There is nothing suspicious, and certainly nothing illegal, about driving a care registered to someone else. If you have ever owned, or had a friend with a pick-up truck, you know this. Personally, my wife and I have both borrowed and loaned vehicles to friends and family. Sure, many dealers have loaner vehicles, but my local mechanic doesn't, so I have borrowed one of my neighbor's extra vehicles when my car has lengthy repairs.
Alex: Yes, technically he may have been trespassing, if the property was posted, but the spirit of the law is no searches based on minor stops. There was no probable cause. As for an arrest for criminal trespass, you have said that non-violent offenders should not lose their liberty, and trespass is pretty low on the list of crimes, especially when the evidence is a sign which may have been missed, rather than a refusal to leave.

[Paul: There is no basis for stating the police ran the plates at the time of the stop. The chief did not say that. I agree there are many important facts we do not know yet.]

""A Massachusetts police department later called us stating they were entering the vehicle as stolen and saw that we ran the vehicle earlier in the evening," Glenn continued."

[Paul: Thanks. That doesn't mean the plates were run at the scene, rather than "earlier in the evening." May be. That's a key open question. And whether the car had been reported stolen before the shooting. We'll find out! The registration was checked for the car itself.]

For Pete's sake, who drives deeply into a remote junkyard in the middle of the night? Unless they're up to something...something like disposing of a firearm.

@breakingbad23 I'm with you. It's pretty clear they ran the plates. Paul's edit to my comment is quite the stretch, but its also his job as a journalist to dig for those details and question things so I won't hold it against him.

While I disagree that there's "no way on God's green earth" that the treatment would have been different based on race, I admit its likely the scenario would have been handled in some way different. What I'm saying is we can't ask police to stop harassing and shaking down black men, yet be mad they didn't shake down and harass an Asian immigrant. I don't think that having police shake down everyone is the equality we want.

@A D A M: I can't figure out where he was based on the google map. What seems to be the parking lot I can't see tracks. Either way, the police are pretty de-incentivized to risk asking for consent on what a judge may later rule was a lost disabled motorist they had no PC on.

@ElmCityLover " Either way, the police are pretty de-incentivized to risk asking for consent on what a judge may later rule was a lost disabled motorist they had no PC on."....

I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure CT cops can't ask for consent anymore. In a situation like this a search warrant would have to be obtained in order to search the vehicle. But I do agree that it seems CT police are de-incentivized to do proactive police work, due to the new laws and climate.

It is entirely possible that the owner did not notice a theft immediately, causing a delay in Massachusetts police entering the vehicle as stolen, preventing North Haven from realizing it was stolen at the time of contact.

And doesn't this same article mention that North Haven was contacted by Massachusetts because they saw the plate had just been run prior to the vehicle being reported stolen?

Inexperienced armchair police experts may have to hang back on this one. Sometimes things just don't happen as fast as TV would make you think.

@ William Kurtz

Perhaps Kevin Glenn should be interviewed
for this story given that he is both public information officer and chief of police.

Based on further revelations today from the US Marshals spokesman it appears that prior to the murder Pan may have been attempting to purchase a getaway car that could not be traced to him rather than use his own car. Perhaps using a fake ID and cash to make the purchase? It appears that fell through because it has been widely reported that he stole a car instead, although who he stole the car from remain a mystery (perhaps an enterprising journalist can get to the bottom of this). What is also a mystery is how he got from CT to GA. Another stolen car or perhaps a new car purchase from a New Haven dealership that was open late on Saturday night.

The Boston Globe had a whole article Friday about how he got the car - he convinced a used car salesman to let him take it to his mechanic for inspection for a few hours and then didn't return. The timing of when it was finally reported stolen was very close to the time of the murder and his interaction w North Haven police.

There was a police car parked outside Ms. Perry's apartment non-stop for about 4 days, which certainly raised a few questions as to why... but this certainly answers it.

On the tangential topic of how pro-active we want police to be, LA Tines is reporting that LAPD has resumed aggressive stop & frisk tactics to try to stem a crime wave. In New Haven, an Alder candidate thinks police should not try to arrest auto thieves, let alone bother people for unregistered cars.

Wow, can you believe that they did not ran his plates? North Haven if he was a black man you would have called for backup, 50 police cars would have shown up, He then would have then been handcuffed put in a chokehold, beaten half to death and the headlines would read he resisted. This is America

People keep harping on this theme of "if he was black they would have searched his car, detained him, whatever" as if that shows the North Haven Police mishandled the case.

It does not. Not! To the contrary, it suggests that they would have mishandled the case had he been black. (Admittedly without evidence.)

Try to reason, people. The fact that members of one group are mistreated by police does not mean the same treatment should be extended to others.

Ravenclaw- people are making the point that the police should treat everyone equally, and if the suspect had been a black man, or a Latinix man he would have not been treated the same way. Some people are given more deference than others at the hands of law enforcement. As shown quite dramatically by the BLM protests and the MAGA protests in DC.
While the North Haven police may have handled things by the book, it is extremely painful to people who have been historically handled very differently for far less suspicious behavior, than how this suspect was handled, who is wanted for questioning related to car theft and murder.

Talk about prejudice and bias. Most of the commenters here have created their version of events based upon how they think police officers would have interacted with Mr. Pan according to their own biases. If you read carefully, you'll see that NoHPD ran the plate and was contacted by the originating agency which saw the inquiry when the were entering the plate into NCIC. I'd be willing to bet those officers went looking for Mr. Pan after receiving that information but he was already in the wind. The problem with speculation is that you're wrong more often than not. Facts don't seem to matter anymore.

> This story confirms what the Yale Daily News reported yesterday afternoon—that Mr. Pan and Ms. Perry knew each other at MIT and were facebook.com friends. Amazing that a campus newspaper scooped the entire journalism world on this story, including the NYT, Boston Herald and others.

How is that amazing? Anyone from one of these schools could go on facebook and find mutual friends and connections in minutes

Does anyone else think Pan is already in China?

>How is that amazing? Anyone from one of these schools could go on facebook and find mutual friends and connections in minutes.

It's remarkable because when I looked at Mr. Pan's facebook profile (as I am sure did other journalists / publications), her name was not listed as a friend -- check for yourself. Mr. Pan is a very intelligent man and had likely "de-friended" her before proceeding to New Haven. The journalists at Yale Dale News dug it up somewhere else and indeed scooped the entire journalism world. Give credit where credit is due.