New Miss Teen USA Cites Aaliyah and Whitney Houston

Hemera/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Logan West, who has also gone by the name of Miss Connecticut, has been crowned Miss Teen USA.

West won the crown in Saturday night’s finale in the Bahamas.

She is 18 and is from Southington, Conn., according to the pageant’s web site. She is a senior at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts and hopes to attend Fordham University in New York to study dance. West said that her ambition is the travel with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre.

Questions for the contestants ranged from Penn State’s recent NCAA sanctions to plastic surgery to the gunman in Colorado.

The pageant’s web page says that West cites two women: Aaliyah and Whitney Houston. Aaliyah was a singer who died in a plane crash in the Bahamas. Houston, who had battled a drug addiction, drowned in a bathtub in Beverly Hills earlier this year.

West said Houston’s “One Moment in Time” is her favorite song.

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