Aug. 29—A New Hampshire man died after being shot by police and falling from the Piscataqua River Bridge following a standoff that closed Interstate 95 early Thursday, authorities said. Police then found an 8-year-old boy who had been fatally shot inside the man’s car.
At a news conference in Kittery Thursday afternoon, Maine State Police Colonel William Ross said the man, who has not been identified, spoke to a York 911 dispatcher around 2 a.m. and said that he was involved in a fight with his wife at their home in Troy, New Hampshire, and that she was dead. New Hampshire State Police found her body at the house.
Kittery police then located the man parked in a southbound lane around 2:30 a.m. in the middle of the high-rise bridge, Ross said.
“I’ve got a car on the bridge with a New Hampshire plate parked in the middle of the bridge exiting the vehicle,” according to police transmissions recorded by Broadcastify.
Law enforcement attempted negotiations and shut down the bridge for several hours, Ross said, but the man eventually exited his vehicle and raised his firearm. That’s when two New Hampshire and one Maine trooper, Craig Nilsen, “responded with deadly force.”
“Subject has a gun in his hand,” the officer told dispatchers, according to the dispatch recording. Minutes later, the officer said the man threw a cardboard box over the bridge into the river.
“He’s not obeying my commands. He still has a firearm in his hand,” he said. “He’s up on the ledge now.”
After he was shot, the man fell into the water, Ross said.
Shortly before 5 a.m., an officer confirmed to dispatchers that the man’s body had been located under the bridge and was on a Coast Guard boat.
“We’ve got him,” he said before being instructed to bring the man to Pepperell Cove.
Officers then asked for an update on the child.
“We cleared the car. Juvenile is in the car deceased,” an officer reported to dispatchers for New Hampshire State Police.
It was still not clear who shot the boy, but police said he was not shot by officers.
“The visual of the child and other things at the scene showed us it was not an officer that shot that child,” Maine State Police spokesperson Shannon Moss said. She would not elaborate on what evidence specifically supported that.
The man’s identity, and that of his wife and his son, have not been released pending next-of-kin notification. Police said the family was new to New Hampshire and their relatives live out-of-state, so it’s been challenging to get in contact with them. Moss said investigators don’t believe the family has any ties to Maine.
POLICE INVESTIGATION
The Office of the Maine Attorney General is investigating the man’s shooting by police, as it does all uses of deadly force by police in Maine. It has never found a police shooting unjustified.
All of the troopers involved have been placed on administrative leave, which is standard protocol after police shootings.
“Per state policy, the identities of the two New Hampshire troopers will be disclosed after they have been formally interviewed as a part of the investigation,” a spokesperson for the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office said.
The Maine attorney general’s office will interview officers from the responding agencies and review footage from body and cruiser cameras, Moss said. She said the cameras on the bridge don’t store recordings and only show live footage.
Both northbound and southbound lanes on the Interstate 95 bridge were shutdown for several hours. Drivers were diverted onto the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge and the Memorial Bridge connecting Portsmouth and Kittery. An average of 77,770 cars cross the bridge on a daily basis, according to Maine Department of Transportation data.
Ross said shutting down the bridge was “a big undertaking” and thanked the multiple law enforcement agencies involved. “A lot of people had to come together to make this work,” he said.
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