News of the investigation came Tuesday as a state Superior Court judge in Danbury denied a motion from plaintiffs seeking documents from 11 Brookfield school officials and members of the town’s police department that could shed light the matter.
Handed down by Judge Barbara Brazzel-Massaro after a hearing conducted on Zoom, the refusal for a petition for a bill of discovery came in deference to the ongoing criminal investigation being conducted by Danbury State’s Attorney David Applegate’s office into a former Brookfield police officer, Steven Rountos, who resigned while under internal investigation in December.
“A period of another two months to wait and see what is happening with the state’s attorney’s investigation certainly is practical and certainly is called for in this particular circumstance,” said Brazzel-Massaro. “So, I am going to deny any of the documents being provided to counsel right now from the (11 people) that were named here.”
Attorneys representing the two female students, who graduated in 2017 and 2019, filed a verified petition for bill of discovery in state Superior Court in Danbury on Aug. 23, outlining the inquiry for evidence and stating a federal agent investigating the matter told them he found, through a search warrant, the photographs on a cellphone and flash drive in possession of Rountos, a former school resource officer assigned to Brookfield High School.
According to the filingthe former students reported the matter to the Brookfield Police Department but became frustrated with a perceived lack of response before filing a report with officers from the Danbury Police Department, who ultimately passed the matter to the US Department of Homeland Security.
News of the state’s investigation comes more than two weeks after Brookfield Police Chief John Puglisi confirmed a federal investigation into the matter to CT Insiderstating agents with the US