Wesleyan shooting suspect caught

Middletown (WTNH) - Stephen Morgan, the suspect in the slaying of a 21-year old Wesleyan student, is in police custody.

Morgan called police from a Cumberland Farms gas station on Old Colony Road in Meriden around 9:15 Thursday night. He was then transported to Middletown for processing. He faces a first degree murder charge and is being held on a $10 million bail.

The 29-year old is the main suspect in the killing of Johanna Justin-Jinich, a Wesleyan junior from Colorado. She was gunned down around 1:00 Wednesday afternoon in front of several witnesses at the Red and Black Café inside Broad Street Books. She worked at the cafe.

Morgan's family in Massachusetts urged him to turn himself in at a Thursday afternoon press conference.

"Turn yourself in right now to any law enforcement agency wherever you are to avoid any further bloodshed," said his sister, Diana Morgan. Diana said the family was "shocked and sickened by the tragedy" in Middletown, and they don't know where he is.

Citing police sources, the Hartford Courant reported Thursday that police briefly talked with Morgan outside the bookstore after the shooting. He was one of many people in the immediate area. A police officer took his name and phone number and let him go, the Courant reported.

The newspaper also says police later confiscated Morgan's car and found a journal in which he spelled out a plan to rape and then kill Justin-Jinich before going on a campus shooting spree.

Police put out a nationwide alert for Morgan, who has past connections to New York, Colorado and Massachusetts.

Police have said this was not a random act of violence. New York University officials say Justin-Jinich filed a harassment complaint against Morgan when they were both in the same six-week summer-session course at the university in 2007.

NYU's Public Safety Department says near the end of the course, Justin-Jinich filed the harassment complaint, saying she had been receiving harassing e-mails and phone calls from Morgan.

In a statement issued late Thursday evening, Wesleyan University President Michael Roth said that the campus will resume normal operations on Friday. Roth also said that a private memorial vigil will be held Friday at 1 p.m. in the Huss Courtyard behind the Usdan Center.

"Our hearts go out to the family and friends of Johanna and hope that this
latest development brings them some measure of comfort," Roth said.