The doctor whose family was murdered in a horrific home invasion in 2007 has been elected to the Connecticut state senate.
Dr William Petit, the only survivor of the attack that claimed the lives of his wife and two daughters, defeated Betty Boukus in the 22nd Senate District.
His wife Joanna Hawke-Petit, 48, and their daughters Michaela, 11, and Hayley, 17, died in their family home at the hands of Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes.
Mrs Hawke-Petit was raped and strangled and the two daughters were both sexually assaulted before being tied to their beds and burned alive.
Dr. Petit was beaten with a baseball bat, tied up and taken to the basement, but he managed to escape and crawl to a neighbor’s house for help.
The testimony in the 2011 trial in detailed how his wife was forced to withdraw $15,000 from a bank after the criminals threatened to harm her family.
Komisarjevsky and Hayes were both sentenced to death, but they were subsequently taken off death row and re-sentenced to life imprisonment.
Dr Petit, a Republican, said he has no plans to try to revive Connecticut’s death penalty when he won his election.
The race hit the headlines last month when a labor union’s political action committee ran an advert that tried to link Petit to Donald Trump and ‘attacks on women and families.’
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