HARTFORD, Vt. (WCAX) – High winds hampered response efforts after a fire broke out at a home in Hartford on Monday.

It happened just after 5 p.m. at a home on Valley View Road.

When crews arrived, they found a home with an attached garage engulfed in flames.

Firefighters used a nearby pond and shuttled water from a municipal hydrant to put it out.

No injuries were reported. Three cats were rescued from the building but first responders say other pets may have died.

The cause of the fire is currently under investigation.

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Two young people who applied in November for a marriage license in Washington have each been charged by authorities in separate January killings that claimed the lives of a Border Patrol agent in Vermont and an 82-year-old landlord in Vallejo, according to police and court records obtained by Open Vallejo.

Maximilian Snyder, a 22-year-old data scientist arrested in Northern California on Friday on suspicion of murder, and Teresa Youngblut, the 21-year-old computer science student charged last week in connection with the shooting death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland, appear to follow a fringe, self-described “vegan Sith” ideology that started in the Bay Area and has connections to violence, according to police records, an interview with a person familiar with the group, and years of social media and blog posts reviewed by Open Vallejo.

Public records show that Snyder and Youngblut applied for a marriage license in King County, Washington, on Nov. 5. It is unclear whether the couple had since married.

Vallejo police arrested Snyder around 12:40 a.m. Friday in Redding, California, in connection with the Jan. 17 stabbing death of Curtis Lind, according to Solano County jail records, court records, interviews, online posts, and other information reviewed by Open Vallejo. He was charged with murder and two enhancements Monday in Solano County Superior Court, according to court records.

A motion filed Monday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Vermont alleges that Youngblut had been in frequent contact with “a person of interest in a homicide investigation in Vallejo, California.” The Vallejo homicide suspect was also previously detained but not charged in connection with a double homicide in Pennsylvania, according to federal prosecutors, who did not elaborate.

In 2022, Lind was allegedly impaled with a sword and blinded in one eye during an attack by several young people who lived in box trucks on his Vallejo property and had stopped paying Lind during the pandemic-era rent moratorium. Court records obtained by Open Vallejo show that Lind was set to testify against his alleged assailants as the sole eyewitness in a criminal trial scheduled for April.

Snyder studied computer science and philosophy at the University of Oxford, according to a LinkedIn profile matching his name, in which he noted an interest in artificial general intelligence and a desire to “help advance the technological frontier of humanity in a responsible manner.” He was named a National Merit Scholar semifinalist in 2019 while attending the private Lakeside School in Seattle, according to The Seattle Times. In 2023, Snyder won $11,000 in an AI alignment awards research contest, according to a post on the Effective Altruism Forum.

Youngblut studies computer science and computer software engineering at the University of Washington, according to her LinkedIn profile. She also attended the Lakeside School, according to The Spokesman-Review.

The Vermont shooting

Youngblut and another person, Felix Baukholt, were driving a 2015 Toyota Prius with a North Carolina license plate in Coventry, Vermont, when multiple Border Patrol agents in three vehicles pulled them over for an immigration inspection around 3 p.m. on Jan. 20, according to an FBI affidavit. Investigators said Baukholt, a German citizen, appeared to have an expired visa, although they later learned it was current. 

Investigators had been surveilling Youngblut and Baukholt since Jan. 14, when an employee of a hotel in Lyndonville, Vermont, reported seeing the pair dressed in black tactical clothing and protective equipment, according to the affidavit. The employee also told officials that they observed Youngblut carrying a holstered firearm. 

Vermont State Police and Homeland Security investigators approached Youngblut and Baukholt that day, according to the affidavit, but the pair “declined to have an extended conversation.” Youngblut and Baukholt allegedly told investigators they were “in the vicinity to look at purchasing property,” and checked out of the hotel that afternoon. 

During the traffic stop, Youngblut drew and fired a handgun toward at least one agent “without warning,” the FBI alleges. Baukholt also attempted to draw a firearm, according to the affidavit, and at least one Border Patrol agent fired at the pair with his 9mm service weapon. 

Youngblut, Baukkholt, and the agent, Maland, were shot during the exchange of gunfire. Baukholt was pronounced dead at the scene and Maland died at North Country Hospital, according to the affidavit.

Youngblut, who was transported to a medical center in New Hampshire for treatment, has since been charged with two federal crimes: intentional use of a deadly weapon while forcibly assaulting or interfering with federal law enforcement, and use and discharge of a firearm during and in relation to an assault with a deadly weapon, according to court records.

FBI agents who searched the Prius found a ballistic helmet, night-vision goggles, 48 rounds of ammunition, used shooting range targets, and a dozen electronic devices, according to the affidavit. Authorities also found cell phones wrapped in aluminum foil at the scene.

‘Creepy in the extreme’

Around 2:30 p.m. on Jan. 17 — three days before the Vermont shooting — a man wearing a mask and black beanie allegedly stabbed Lind to death just outside his gated property on the 300 block of Lemon Street in Vallejo, according to police. Lind died at Kaiser Permanente Vallejo Medical Center shortly after the attack. 

Snyder is being held without bail in connection with the incident at the Justice Center Detention Facility in Fairfield, California, according to jail records. His first court appearance is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. 

Thomas Young, who said Lind was a close friend, told Open Vallejo in a Friday interview that Lind had been living in fear since he was severely injured in the violent dispute with tenants at his Lemon Street property in 2022.

During that incident, Lind shot two of his alleged attackers, injuring one person and killing 31-year-old Emma Borhanian, according to court records. Solano County prosecutors charged Suri Dao and Alexander Jeffrey Leatham with murder, attempted murder, and aggravated mayhem for the death of their companion, Borhanian, and the attempted killing of Lind, court records show. 

Young said he searched the property after the attack and found used surgical equipment, more than a dozen laptops, and expensive electronics stashed inside the cargo trucks where the alleged assailants lived, which were registered in Vermont. 

“It was actually very uncomfortable,” Young said about walking into the trucks. “You kinda wanted to put on a hazmat suit before going into it. It was really just creepy in the extreme.”

The ‘Zizians’

Lind was not the only one worried that the 2022 attack was a harbinger of future violence.

Posts in various online forums attributed the attack to a group known as the “Zizians.” Called a cult by some, the group is a radical offshoot of the Rationalist movement, an ideology centered on using scientific techniques to enhance human decision making. A post warning about the group on Rationalist forum website LessWrong.com named Dao, Leatham and Borhanian as associates of the group’s namesake “Ziz,” whose legal name is Jack LaSota.

LaSota was not arrested in connection with the 2022 attack on Lind, although records obtained by Open Vallejo show they lived at the Lemon Street property. LaSota does not appear in any official records related to Lind’s death or the Vermont shooting. They did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

LaSota, Leatham, Borhanian, and another person were arrested in Sonoma County in 2019 while protesting an alumni reunion of the Center for Applied Rationality, a Rationalist nonprofit based in Berkeley. The group allegedly blocked the exits of the Westminster Camp and Conference Center with multiple vehicles and wore robes and Guy Fawkes masks popularized by the film “V for Vendetta” and, later, the hacker collective Anonymous.

A Westminster employee told the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office that one protester had a gun, but the report was not confirmed, according to The Press Democrat. The protesters filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in 2019 against the Sonoma County Sheriff’s office, the camp and four individuals for their alleged mistreatment during the arrest and in jail. The lawsuit was stayed pending a criminal prosecution related to the protest. 

Community warnings posted in online forums about the group cite the protest and the 2022 stabbing as evidence of their potential danger.

Jessica Taylor said she was a friend of Bauckholt, who Taylor knew by the name Ophelia. In an interview with Open Vallejo on Sunday, Taylor said she heard through a mutual friend that a German national was involved in a shooting in Vermont, and started to piece together the biographical details. When she realized it was her friend, she began posting on X about the incident.

In one post, Taylor says she warned Baukholt about Zizians, calling them a “murder gang” in her interview with Open Vallejo. She said that she fell out of communication with Baukholt in late 2023.

It is not clear what kind of, if any, structure the group has. The word “Zizian” was created by others as a label for this offshoot of the Rationalist movement, and these individuals may not even call themselves such, according to Taylor.

Taylor said the group believes in timeless decision theory, a Rationalist belief suggesting that human decisions and their effects are mathematically quantifiable. 

The Zizians also apparently believe that because there are two hemispheres in the brain, individuals can split their consciousness between two personalities by waking one side at a time, Taylor said. She said veganism and animal rights are also central to the ideology. A bio for an Instagram account that appears to belong to Youngblut reads, “talk to me about being vegan and ai alignment.”

Snyder and Youngblut’s social media posts and accounts display beliefs consistent with Zizianism, although court records do not explicitly tie them to the ideology.

“There’s this whole literature and decision theory about this kind of thing. So there’s some amount of legitness behind this,” Taylor said of timeless decision theory. “But they take it in all these weird directions where they’re talking about, like, ‘Oh, maybe if I make this decision, I will, like, burn the entire timeline.’ And so it gets really weird.”

Gov. Phil Scott’s highly anticipated “bold” plans to reform the education property tax system were revealed on Jan. 22 — the most notable among them to completely redesign the funding formula and condense Vermont’s 52 school districts and supervisory unions into just five regional districts.

During the almost 50-minute presentation, Secretary of Education Zoie Saunders and Tax Commissioner Craig Bolio pitched the ambitious proposal as a way to make Vermont’s infamously complicated and expensive property tax system more affordable, transparent and predictable, while also improving education quality and equity.

Scott’s proposal comes after years of historic property tax increases, which hit a tipping point last year with an almost 14% jump, Saunders said. In response, an unprecedented 33% of school budgets failed to pass in 2024, especially in less wealthy areas of the state. Vermonters also showed their frustration when they voted in November to reduce Democrats’ legislative power from a supermajority to a slim lead in both the House and Senate.

“There is an urgency to act,” Saunders said.

Scott’s plan received initial positive reactions from House Speaker Krowinski (D-Burlington) and Senate pro tempore Phil Baruth (P/D-Burlington), who in a joint statement thanked the governor for his proposal and said committees in both chambers would pour over it and listen to community feedback in the coming weeks.

The Vermont-National Education Association (NEA), however, criticized the governor’s plan as “big on rhetoric but short on the details.”

“It doesn’t explain how these changes would be better for students,” the NEA said in a statement. “It doesn’t simplify an overly complex school funding system. And it doesn’t provide immediate and ongoing property tax relief for middle-class Vermonters.”

How would this change local school districts?

Scott’s plan seeks to simplify the governance structure of Vermont’s public school system — paring 52 school districts and supervisory unions down to five regional districts — which both Saunders and Bolio say would reduce redundancy, improve efficiency and free up funds for higher priorities, such as increasing teachers’ salaries.

Under the five-district model, each regional district would have one school board with elected members serving in paid part-time roles. Every district would have one central office with “robust” staff, Saunders said.

To maintain local influence under the new model, each school would have a school advisory council comprised of caregivers, educators, staff and students.

What are the five education regional districts?

Vermont’s five regional districts would be divided into the Champlain Valley district, Winooski Valley district, the Northwest region, the Southwest region and the Southeast region.

Each district would support between 10,000 to 15,000 students, except for Champlain Valley (where Chittenden County is located), which would support just over 34,000 students.

How does Scott think this will make schools more equitable and affordable?

Saunders said that Vermont’s current system fails to provide “equitable education for all,” especially for children who are economically disadvantaged, English learners, and children with special needs. But there are also disparities in Vermont’s system based on geography, with schools in poorer areas fielding fewer courses, credits and experienced staff members than wealthier areas, which in turn impacts performance outcomes, Saunders said.

Under the current property tax system, voters decide how much funding their individual communities need and the state raises it through statewide taxes, a system that does not incentivize voters from wealthier areas (who can afford higher taxes) to trim bloat from their budgets, Bolio said.

“The worst part is the lowest-spending, highest-needs communities struggled the most to pass their budgets,” Saunders said.

The new proposed funding formula, called a foundation formula, would put the legislature in charge of setting a base spending rate for each student, with added weights to balance the needs of traditionally disadvantaged students. If some districts want to spend more than what the state proposes, they can do so on an individual level.

“The biggest takeaway is the ability for us to ensure our students receive the same level of resources to meet their needs regardless of geography,” Saunders said.

How much that base rate will be has not been publicly released yet, but will be “very generous” in comparison to other states, while also affordable, according to Saunders.

Megan Stewart is a government accountability reporter for the Burlington Free Press. Contact her at mstewartyounger@gannett.com.