Tuitt receives 17-year sentence

TORRINGTON >> A city man was recently sentenced to 17 years in prison, according to staff at Litchfield Superior Court, after previously pleading guilty to risk of injury to a minor.

Craig Tuitt, of 92 Oak Ave., No. 2, was arrested in October 2015 and charged with first-degree sexual assault of a victim under 16, risk of injury, sexual contact without consent, illegal sexual contact with a victim over 13 and attempt to commit a crime.

He later pleaded guilty to risk of injury, a class C felony, in March, as well as a violation of probation stemming from a 2008 case.

According to court clerk Bob Stearns, Tuitt was sentenced to 10 years on May 19 for the risk of injury charge, suspended after three, with

five years’ probation, and seven years, suspended after three, in connection with the violation of probation.

The two terms will be served concurrently, according to Stearns.

In the 2008 case, he was later convicted of attempt to commit illegal contact with a victim under 16 years old, enticing a minor by using a computer and first-degree violation of conditions of release for a 2008 incident and sentenced to three years in prison with 10 years of probation. Tuitt will stay on probation for the violation of probation charge, Stearns said, for the remainder of the initial term he was assigned in connection with the 2008 case.

“The Glastonbury electrical engineer thought he was meeting a 15-year-old girl at her home in Bantam in July 2008 while her mother was at work, but he was met by several state troopers instead, police said,” according to past reporting on the 2008 case.

From his computer at home and the computer at work, he talked with the girl for weeks, police said.

He “groomed” the girl by sending her Internet links to pornography sites and instructions about how to please him sexually, police said. He was actually talking to a state trooper posing as the teen.

Tuitt allegedly offered to pay a minor in exchange for a sexual act in connection with the 2015 case, according to testimony recounted in an affidavit seeking a warrant for his arrest, and pleasured himself in front of the minor.

He denied offering to pay the minor for the sexual act, according to the affidavit, and “further denied ever having contact with any minors without having his approved supervisor present.”