Bethel woman found dead
Emily Todd grew up around the water.
The 25-year-old Bethel woman hailed from a family of lobster men on the small coastal Chebeague Island in Maine. Her Facebook profile photo shows her staring out at the sea.
The last thing Todd may have seen before police said she was shot in the back of the head was Bridgeport Harbor.
“She was here to meet with a man and obviously it didn’t go well,” Police Capt. Brian Fitzgerald said Monday afternoon of the woman found dead near the city’s boat ramp on Seaview Avenue.
Police are now searching for that as-yet unidentified man. They said Todd was shot at the scene possibly after a struggle.
A 2011 graduate of Bethel High School, Todd attended Western Connecticut State University and Leslie University, where she graduated in 2016 with a degree in expressive arts therapy.
She was employed as a therapeutic recreational assistant at St. John Paul II Center in Danbury. Employees there declined to comment.
Joe Henriques, owner of H&H Shellfish, was preparing to work on one of his boats Sunday morning with his brother and a welder when the trio noticed something on the sand near their Seaview Avenue docks.
“The welder saw like a dolly or something on the beach,” Henriques recalled Monday. “My brother started looking, says, ‘No, this is a body.’ ”
They had discovered, and then reported to police, the city’s 10th homicide of the year.
Police described Todd as heavy-set, with short, cropped hair, several tattoos and body and facial piercings. She was wearing a blonde braided wig with a scarf attached, a brown sweater with white print, blue jeans and short black boots.
Todd’s body was found on a narrow stretch of sand between H&H’s property and a public boat ramp at the intersection with Newfield Avenue that abuts Dolphin’s Cove Restaurant.