An armed individual walked into the lobby of a state psychiatric hospital in New Hampshire on Friday and shot dead a former police chief working as a security guard before a state police officer on duty at the facility shot and killed the suspect, officials said.
New Hampshire state police initially had reported “multiple victims” from the shooting, but no one else, including the trooper who confronted the suspect, was injured in the gun violence, which erupted at about 3.30pm ET at the New Hampshire state hospital in Concord, the state capital, according to Mark Hall, the state police colonel.
The slain security guard was later identified as 63-year-old state safety department officer Bradley Haas.
Haas worked as a police officer for 28 years in Franklin, New Hampshire, and rose to become the town’s police chief, said a statement from the state attorney general’s office.
Addressing reporters, Hall declined to give any information about the suspect.
He said investigators were still trying to identify the shooter. “The suspect in this situation is deceased,” he said, without elaborating or taking questions. He also said there was no longer any threat to the public.
Authorities planned to provide an update on the case Saturday.
Lori Weaver, commissioner for New Hampshire’s department of health and human services, said, “all patients and staff at the hospital are safe”.
Bomb squad officers were also investigating a suspicious vehicle on the hospital grounds, Hall said, without elaborating.
The shooting unfolded quickly. Moments after the suspect entered the lobby and shot one individual, “a state trooper assigned to the hospital and in close proximity immediately engaged, shot and killed the suspect”, Hall said. “The entire incident was contained within the lobby of the hospital.”
The facility is a secure, in-patient psychiatric hospital where all visitors must enter through metal detectors and a police officer is always on duty, according WMUR-TV.
Concord police and deputies from the Merrimack county sheriff’s department, along with state police, were at the scene on Friday and aerial views showed an active scene with numerous police cars outside the hospital. New Hampshire’s homeland security and emergency department was setting up a media center at a nearby sports field, the Associated Press reported.
Hall said additional officers were on the scene within minutes, adding that a police academy graduation was taking place on the surrounding campus at the time.
The 184-bed hospital is situated on the grounds of a 120-acre campus that is home to other state agencies, including the department of health and human services, the department of education and the public utility commission, WMUR-TV said.
