CONCORD, NH — A New Hampshire police officer who fatally shot a man at a psychiatric hospital in November, shortly after the man killed a guard, was justified in using deadly force, the state’s attorney general said in a report Thursday.
The Soldier, Nathan Sleight, fired at John Madore on November 17 after Madore fatally shot Bradley Haas, a state Department of Safety security officer working at the main entrance of New Hampshire Hospital. Madore was a former patient at Concord Hospital.
The report states that Madore entered the hospital and “immediately and without warning” fired a handgun at the unarmed Haas, who was standing near the entrance, before firing multiple shots into the lobby wall, a switchboard service window, a security door leading from the lobby into the hospital, and back at Haas.
He began to reload his pistol when Sleight drew his service pistol, opened a door leading from his office to the lobby, and ordered Madore to put down his weapon.
“Madore turned and faced Trooper Sleight, ignored his commands and continued to attempt to reload his pistol,” according to the report by Attorney General John Formella. Sleight shot him, and Madore fell to the ground.
“As Madore lay on the ground, he continued to attempt to reload his pistol, causing Trooper Sleight to fire the remaining ammunition in his service pistol at Madore in an attempt to prevent Madore from reloading,” the report said.
Around that time, a residential patient who was unaware of what was happening entered the lobby and heard Madore say something along the lines of, “I hate this place,” the report said. Sleight escorted the man back to the parking lot.
Video cameras showed that all these events happened in less than a minute.
The report said Sleight’s conclusion that Madore posed an imminent lethal threat was “objective and reasonably based.”
Sleight has approximately 11 years of experience in law enforcement.
The report found that Madore had a history of mental health problems and had previously been a residential patient at the hospital for 13 days in February 2016, and for a further nine months between May 2016 and March 2017.
His father told investigators that Madore had previously expressed paranoid thoughts that hospital workers were trying to harvest his organs, and he continued to talk about it regularly after he was released.