Report provides new details on what led up to New Hampshire Hospital shooting last November

A Concord police officer walks outside the New Hampshire Hospital grounds after a shooting at the facility on Friday afternoon.

A Concord police officer walks outside the New Hampshire Hospital grounds after a shooting at the facility on Friday afternoon. GEOFF FORESTER / Monitor staff

A Concord police officer stands outside the New Hampshire Hospital grounds after a shooting at the facility on Friday afternoon, November 17, 2023.

A Concord police officer stands outside the New Hampshire Hospital grounds after a shooting at the facility on Friday afternoon, November 17, 2023. GEOFF FORESTER

Police stand at the entrance to New Hampshire Hospital, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023, in Concord, N.H. A fatal shooting at the New Hampshire psychiatric hospital Friday ended with the suspect dead, police said. New Hampshire Hospital is the state psychiatric hospital, located in the state’s capital city. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

Police stand at the entrance to New Hampshire Hospital, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023, in Concord, N.H. A fatal shooting at the New Hampshire psychiatric hospital Friday ended with the suspect dead, police said. New Hampshire Hospital is the state psychiatric hospital, located in the state’s capital city. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer) Michael Dwyer

FILE - Police work at the scene of a shooting at New Hampshire Hospital Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Court records show that John Madore, who fatally shot a security guard at a New Hampshire psychiatric hospital moments before being killed by a state police trooper was not allowed to have guns, ammunition, or any other dangerous weapons following an arrest in 2016. (Geoff Forester/The Concord Monitor via AP, File)

FILE - Police work at the scene of a shooting at New Hampshire Hospital Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. Court records show that John Madore, who fatally shot a security guard at a New Hampshire psychiatric hospital moments before being killed by a state police trooper was not allowed to have guns, ammunition, or any other dangerous weapons following an arrest in 2016. (Geoff Forester/The Concord Monitor via AP, File) Geoff Forester

This image from video shows New Hampshire Hospital, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023, in Concord. A fatal shooting at a New Hampshire psychiatric hospital Friday ended with the suspect dead, police said. New Hampshire Hospital is the state psychiatric hospital, located in the state’s capital city.

This image from video shows New Hampshire Hospital, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023, in Concord. A fatal shooting at a New Hampshire psychiatric hospital Friday ended with the suspect dead, police said. New Hampshire Hospital is the state psychiatric hospital, located in the state’s capital city. AP file

By JEREMY MARGOLIS

Monitor staff

Published: 08-22-2024 5:20 PM

Modified: 08-22-2024 7:14 PM


The man who shot and killed a security officer at the New Hampshire Hospital last November had grown increasingly desperate in his search for stable housing during the weeks and days prior to the shooting, according to a report released by the state Attorney General’s Office on Thursday.

The report reveals new details about what transpired before John David Madore, 33, killed hospital security officer and former Franklin Police Chief Bradley Haas, 63, in the lobby of the hospital on Nov. 17, 2023.

In the two weeks before the shooting, Madore had bounced around Concord-area hotel rooms, which were paid for by his father. On the evening before the shooting, he expressed concern in text messages to family members that his father would eventually stop paying for his hotel rooms, according to the report.

The following day, Madore rented a U-Haul to transport his belongings from the Holiday Inn in Concord to what he hoped would be a less expensive hotel in Manchester. But text messages revealed he did not end up renting a room at the new hotel, the Econo-Lodge, because it proved more expensive than he anticipated.

Instead, Madore drove back to Concord in the U-Haul, arriving outside the New Hampshire Hospital at 3:38 p.m. With his box truck still running, Madore entered the hospital lobby. Two seconds later, according to video surveillance, he removed a pistol from his sweatshirt, and fatally shot Haas – stationed behind a metal detector.

Twenty seconds after Madore killed Haas, Nathan Sleight, the State Police officer stationed onsite, shot Madore, inflicting wounds that would ultimately kill him too. Investigators concluded Sleight’s use of deadly force was legally justified.

Events Leading up to the Shooting

Madore, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, was a residential patient at New Hampshire Hospital on two occasions for a total of over nine months, according to the report.

In February 2016, he was stopped while speeding and officers discovered a loaded gun in the car. He wound up spending 13 days at the hospital. Three months later, following a domestic incident with his mother, he was re-admitted to the hospital and spent about nine months there, according to investigators’ interview with Madore’s father, David Michael Madore.

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Madore’s father told investigators that his son “did not like being at the hospital, and still held some animosity toward the hospital itself but not any particular person employed there,” the report states. Madore “previously expressing paranoid ideations that the providers at the hospital were trying to harvest his organs,” according to his father.

In the years after his hospital stays, Madore lived in the Concord area, either at his mother’s house or in apartment complexes, including the Morning Star Condominiums in the Concord Heights and Penacook Landing in Penacook. From 2021 to October 2023, he lived with his mother, until she sold her house.

On Nov. 1, 2023, Madore checked into the Hampton Motor Inn in Hampton and stayed there until Nov. 16, with the hotel bill paid by his family. On Nov. 16, he called his sister to report that he couldn’t stay in the hotel anymore “because people were trying to break into his room”. Madore’s sister sent him money to take an Uber to the Holiday Inn in Concord, where he stayed that night.

The following morning, Madore texted with his family members about what he should do next. The family discussed 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.’”

At 10:18 a.m. that morning, Madore rented a U-Haul from the company store on Stickney Avenue in Concord, loaded his belongings from the Holiday Inn, and left the hotel approximately 35 minutes later.

Madore’s phone records indicate he drove to the Manchester hotel with a pit stop at Walmart on the way and arrived shortly past noon. At approximately 1 p.m. he spoke to his father by phone and agreed to return to the motor inn in Hampton, his father told investigators.

But Madore’s phone records suggest that after leaving Manchester he did not head in the direction of the motor inn where he had spent the previous two weeks. Instead, he traveled toward Concord, then west all the way to Stoddard, before turning around and heading to the New Hampshire Hospital, where he arrived at just after 3:30 p.m.

The Shooting

Security officer Bradley Haas was unarmed and standing behind a table next to a metal detector in the lobby when a large man in a sweatshirt entered through the state psychiatric facility’s double doors.

Madore immediately pointed his pistol at Haas and shot multiple times. Haas fell backward, hitting the ground. An autopsy later revealed he suffered six gunshot wounds that caused injuries to his brain, lungs, heart, and liver.

After shooting Haas, Madore walked through the metal detector and fired at the lobby’s switchboard services window, before turning and shooting at Haas again.

As Madore attempted to re-load his gun, Officer Sleight, who had been in an adjoining room and had heard the gunshots, opened the door to the lobby and ordered Madore to drop his gun. He refused, and Sleight shot him.

Madore fell to the ground, but did not die. As he tried to reload while leaning against a lobby wall, Sleight shot him again.

Sleight told investigators following the shooting that he heard a “really loud bang” when Madore shot Haas but initially didn’t identify the noise as a gunshot. Then, a police dispatcher whose window faces the lobby yelled “gunshots, gunshots!”

Sleight initially worried that opening the door to the lobby would create a “fatal tunnel,” but ultimately decided he had no choice but to engage Madore because the lobby is a busy place. He described Madore as looking back at him in a “dead stare” when he was told to drop the gun.

About 13 seconds after Madore was shot the second time, a residential patient entered the hospital lobby before Sleight quickly escorted him out. Surveillance footage shows Madore leaning up and speaking to the patient.

“I hate this place,” Madore said, according to the patient.

Post-Shooting Investigation

Investigators found that Madore attested that he had never been “committed to a mental institution” when he bought the gun he used in the shooting at a Barrington gun dealer in 2020.

Following the release of Thursday’s report, House Democrats stated that Madore had been involuntarily committed and pointed to legislation that failed to pass, which would have made it harder for individuals with a history of mental illness to buy a gun.

Investigators did not reach a conclusion one way or the other on whether Madore had in fact been involuntarily committed prior to purchasing the gun, Assistant Attorney General Adam Woods said in a brief interview. 

That finding was outside the scope of the investigation, which focused primarily on whether or not Sleight was justified in using deadly force, according to Woods.

It is possible that Madore voluntarily entered the state-run facility during both of his stays rather than being committed. The report, however, does appear to suggest that is unlikely, citing a finding that Madore was not competent to stand trial in Strafford County Superior Court made at around the same time he spent nine months in the hospital.

“Publicly available information does not confirm if this finding of incompetency led to the admission or not, but the timing of his admission was concurrent with the incompetency issue being raised in that case,” investigators wrote.

After the shooting, investigators found an AR-15-style rifle in Madore’s UHaul and a collection of military style equipment and manuals. Specifically, they found a chest rig, multiple loaded AR-15 magazines and manuals with titles including “survival”, “silencers”, and “explosives and demolitions.”

Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.