NH Hospital shooter bought gun in Barrington by concealing hospital commitment

The man who fatally shot security officer Bradley Haas in the New Hampshire Hospital lobby in November was prohibited under federal law from purchasing a gun because he had been committed to a psychiatric facility in 2016. Mental health concerns also led the police to confiscate guns he had at the time.

But John Madore , 33, told the Barrington gun dealer who sold him the pistol he used to kill Haas that he’d never had such a commitment, according to a report released Thursday by the Attorney General’s Office. And the dealer had no other way to know because New Hampshire does not require commitment records to be submitted to the background database.

Legislation that would have reversed that practice passed the House this year but failed when Senate Republicans defeated it at the urging of pro-gun rights groups.

The Attorney General’s Office’s 44-page report of the Nov. 17 incident answers some of the biggest questions following the shooting that left two people dead in less than a minute.

In addition to revealing the source of Madore’s guns, the report gives a step-by-step account of the shooting; discloses that Madore had been diagnosed with schizophrenia; and reveals that a patient unaware of the situation entered the hospital lobby before it was secure and was escorted out.

However, the report does not state Madore’s motives or say what brought him to the state hospital on Nov. 17, a place he knew from two previous hospitalizations, in 2016 and 2017; the latter lasted nine months. Madore’s father told investigators that his son held animosity toward the hospital but not particular employees.

“Madore previously (expressed) paranoid ideations that the providers at the hospital were trying to harvest his organs, which he continued to periodically discuss even after his discharge,” the report said.

The report released Thursday says only that Madore was homeless, out of work, and concerned that his family was going to stop supporting him financially. He had communicated with his family about moving into a temporary assisted living facility but opted not to because he did not want to relinquish his firearms, which included an AR-15 rifle that he brought to the hospital but left in his vehicle.

The report concludes with a finding that Trooper Nathan Sleight, who was on duty at the hospital, was justified in using deadly force against Madore when Madore ignored an order to drop his gun and tried to reload it.

“Trooper Sleight described Madore looking straight at him with a “dead stare” while ignoring his verbal commands,” the report said. “Knowing that the lobby was a heavily trafficked area of the hospital, Trooper Sleight described his concern that if Madore was able to reload his pistol he would be an imminent deadly threat to him as well as everyone else in the hospital. He then fired his service pistol at Madore.”

Sleight fired a second time, the report said, when Madore continued “to manipulate the pistol.”

Madore was unsettled and suspicious

The report accounts for Madore’s movements beginning on Nov. 1, when he checked into a Hampton hotel room, reserving it through Nov. 22. His family paid the bill.

Madore said in text messages to his family the night before the shooting that he was concerned his father was not going to continue paying for hotel rooms indefinitely. He told them he felt unsafe at the Hampton hotel and requested money for an Uber ride to another hotel.

Madore relocated to a Concord hotel where he rented a room for a single night. He remained in contact with his family through the morning of the shooting the next day.

“The discussions centered around his decision not to live in temporary assisted living which, in his opinion, would require him to surrender his ‘constitutional rights’ and ‘abandon his weapons,’ ” the report said.

Madore decided to look for a less expensive hotel in Manchester and rented a U-Haul truck to move his belongings. Unable to find a cheaper place, Madore began driving north, reaching Stoddard before turning around and heading back to Concord, where he parked the U-Haul in the state hospital parking lot around 3:38 p.m.

Madore left the engine running and entered the hospital lobby.

Twenty-two seconds later, Madore had killed Haas, fired twice at the windows of the switchboard office in the lobby area, and was shot for the first time by Sleight, whose office is off the lobby.

Sleight’s shots caused Madore to fall toward the wall, his pistol in his right hand and the magazine in the other. He continued attempting to reload, the report said, prompting Sleight to shoot again.

Less than 20 seconds later, with Haas and Madore on the floor, a patient, unaware of what had happened, walked into the lobby. Madore spoke to him and the patient was escorted out safely.

None of the approximately 150 patients or other staff were injured.

The Concord police arrived about five minutes later and removed Haas’ body. An autopsy showed that he’d been shot six times. Madore had 11 bullet wounds.

While Sleight was armed in his role as a state trooper, Haas was unarmed, per state hospital security policy in place at the time. That’s not unusual among the state’s other medical hospitals .

The Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Safety have since moved to station private armed security at the hospital . Department of Safety spokesman Tyler Dumont said Thursday that the state is reviewing the proposals it received and expects to sign a contract.

He ‘absolutely would have shot and killed everybody’

The hospital remained in lockdown for nearly an hour after the shooting, during which staff did not know if anyone had been killed or whether a shooter was still at large. In urging lawmakers to pass the bill this year that would have added commitment records to background checks, hospital leaders described the shooting and uncertainty afterward as among the worst moments of their lives.

Commissioner Lori Weaver told executive councilors earlier this year that some staff have needed to take temporary leave as a result.

A dispatcher who spoke with investigators for the report said she witnessed the shooting incident from the moment Madore walked in and began firing. She called for help.

“As she heard Trooper Sleight yelling for Madore to drop the gun, (the dispatcher) saw Madore grabbing for another magazine to reload his pistol,” the report said. “She advised that she was afraid for her life, hoping that the bullet-proof glass in the window would hold up, and thinking that Madore ‘absolutely would have shot and killed everybody’ if he was able to reload his pistol.”

A switchboard operator, also stationed off the lobby, shared similar concerns about her safety with investigators. She hid under a desk until the police arrived.

When Madore stopped moving, the dispatcher ran from her office, kicked his pistol away from his body, and ran to help Haas.

“She stayed there until Trooper Sleight yelled for her to get out of the building and she left through the front doors,” the report said. “(The dispatcher) was outside when a large number of police officers arrived and dragged (security officer) Haas out to the sidewalk where she began providing him with emergency medical assistance until EMS arrived.”

A ‘preventable’ tragedy

Rep. J.R. Hoell, a Dunbarton Republican and secretary of the New Hampshire Firearms Coalition, helped lead the effort this year to defeat House Bill 1711 , which would have required the state to begin submitting commitment records to the background database. New Hampshire is one of a few states that do not provide those records.

After the shooting, there was speculation that Madore may have obtained his guns in a manner that does not require background checks, such as through a private sale or at a gun show. In that case, the bill would have made a difference, the legislation’s critics argued.

Confirmation that Madore had purchased his gun from a dealer by lying about his psychiatric commitment did not move Hoell to think differently about the bill. He said it still would not have increased safety and would have instead led to the confiscation of individuals’ guns.

“There is no system that government can run that can keep firearms out of the hands of people who want to commit harm,” Hoell said in an interview. “There are five million firearms in the United States. If someone wants one, they will go get one.”

The better response to the hospital shooting, Hoell said, is arming hospital security staff.

“The threat would have been dealt with had Haas been armed and had a bulletproof vest on as he was manning the metal detector,” Hoell said. “That was asinine. They literally set Haas up to be murdered.”

The co-sponsors of HB 1711 said the report confirms their argument that their bill would help save lives.

“It’s not always a happy occasion when you’re right,” said Rep. Terry Roy, a Deerfield Republican and Second Amendment advocate in the House, in a text message. “I hope to not be again with regard to this. The fact is that the Senate listened to the wrong people on this matter, giving more weight to the local libertarians than the NRA who has supported the efforts for over a decade.”

While the gun-rights group has supported some background check measures in the past, it has at other times opposed them. A 2018 poll by Monmouth University Polling Institute, however, showed that 69 percent of NRA members supported comprehensive background checks.

Roy’s co-sponsor, Rep. David Meuse, a Portsmouth Democrat, said the report shows Haas’ death is a “tragedy that may have been preventable.”

“Today’s confirmation that the New Hampshire Hospital shooter purchased the weapon used to murder Officer Bradley Haas after two extended periods of involuntary commitment illustrates the tragic gap in our law that HB 1711 was intended to close,” he said in a text message. “The Attorney General’s report is a sad reminder not only of a tragedy that may have been preventable, but also of the failure of New Hampshire Senate Republicans to prevent a similar tragedy from happening again.”

This story was originally published by the New Hampshire Bulletin .

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: NH Hospital shooter bought gun in Barrington by concealing hospital commitment