CONCORD, N.H. — A man 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, according to court records.
At that time, police seized an assault-style rifle and 9 mm handgun from John Madore, 33. Madore, who was arrested in Strafford on assault and reckless conduct charges, was later involuntarily admitted at New Hampshire Hospital in Concord, according to records. The charges were dismissed in 2017 following a competency evaluation that remains sealed.
The weapons ban against Madore was part of bail orders unsealed by a judge Wednesday following a request by the New Hampshire Bulletin.
On Nov. 17, Madore had a 9 mm pistol and ammunition when he shot and killed Bradley Haas, a state Department of Safety security officer who was working at the hospital’s front lobby entrance, the state attorney general’s office said. Madore was fatally shot by a state trooper shortly afterward.
In addition to the pistol, police found an AR-style rifle, a tactical vest and several ammunition magazines in a U-Haul truck in the hospital’s parking lot that Madore had rented.
Those firearms were not the same ones seized in 2016, Michael Garrity, a spokesperson for the New Hampshire attorney general’s office, confirmed in a statement late Wednesday. The guns used in 2016 remain in the custody of the Strafford Police Department, he said.
It remains unclear how Madore, who had most recently lived in a hotel in New Hampshire’s Seacoast area, acquired the guns found Nov. 17. If he had tried to buy them, he would have been required to note his hospitalization at a mental health institution when filling out a federal firearms application.
Madore was accused in 2016 of choking his sister and grabbing his mother around the neck and knocking her to the floor because he was upset that they had put the family dog down, according to an affidavit.
When police arrived at their Strafford home, Madore was barricaded in an upstairs bedroom and said he had firearms and that it wasn’t going to end well, the police affidavit states. He eventually surrendered peacefully, police said.
A celebration of life has been scheduled on Nov. 27 for for Haas, 63, a former police chief from Franklin, New Hampshire.
