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New Hampshire
Family calls cops 37 times, receives death threats from encampment of violent vagabonds behind dream home: ‘I can’t even use my backyard’
Their dream home has become a place of nightmares.
A New Hampshire family is being terrorized by a homeless encampment that sprouted up behind their historic home, leading to violent encounters with the vagrants, according to a report.
Robin Bach and her husband spent years restoring their 19th-century dream home in Concord to raise their two children, ages 8 and 11 — but have been plagued by the campers living in the woods behind the palatial abode.
They’ve received death threats and have heard gunshots and screams from beyond the tree line. A swingset in their backyard, bought in 2020 during the pandemic, sits untouched by her terrified children, who will only play in the front yard.
“I can’t even use my backyard. My kids can’t go out there,” Bach told the Concord Monitor. “I would like my children to be independent and feel comfortable going outside and playing and they won’t.
“This is the worst it’s ever been, It’s the worst it’s ever been.”
Since purchasing the house in 2018 with grand plans to renovate and raise a family, Bach has called police 37 times, according to police records reviewed by the newspaper. Six calls were for an area check, another six for disturbances as well as domestic violence and criminal trespassing incidents.
During one of their first summers in the house, Bach’s husband found a man, who they had previously seen lurking in the woods near some tents, sitting in their backyard. When he asked the man to leave, the interloper threatened to shoot him.
The man returned several times until Bach filed a restraining order against him — and cops hauled him off in handcuffs as her young children watched, she told the Concord Monitor.
In another incident, she was teaching her son how to do laundry when they heard chilling screams of some yelling, “Get off me, get off me” coming from the encampment, prompting another police call.
A dumpster fire behind a neighbor’s home two doors down sent wailing firetrucks rushing up her street to put out the blaze, the outlet said.
When Bach asked for a quote to install a chain link fence around her property, she was disheartened to learn that it would cost $50,000, she told the Monitor.
“I can’t afford to clean it up. I can’t physically do it myself,” she said about the garbage visible from the house. “So the trash remains.”
What was once just one or two tents when she first moved in, the camp has ballooned to about half a dozen, as New Hampshire experiences one of the largest percentage increases in homelessness in the country, according to the paper.
The encampment on Bach’s property poses a unique challenge because it borders property and train tracks owned by CSX, a freight railroad company.
While Concord police can go and issue no-trespassing orders at any time, CSX also has its own police detail that will sweep the area and arrest people.
Police are able to clear out the camp and have done so a few times and tried to connect them with local programs to find stable housing — but that’s the extent of the city’s involvement on private property, meaning the litter stays.
And, after the police have moved the campers out, they just return in a matter of days, Bach told the Monitor.
“We have a pretty significant homeless problem,” Barrett Moulton, the deputy chief of patrol and police liaison on the city’s homeless steering committee, told the outlet. “They’re going to be somewhere.”
“It’s Whack-a-Mole,” Bach echoed. “You can’t just ask them to leave, they’re going to go somewhere else. You have to give them someplace to go.”
Bach understands that squatters behind her home need assistance and stability. She recently spoke to a man who holds a day job and tries to keep the area around his ten clean.
She and other local leaders believe a solution would be to create a designated campsite for the homeless in the city, where much-needed resources and outreach can be concentrated in one place.
“You can put your tent here, here’s bathrooms, dumpsters,” she said. “They’ve come here and told them to move a million times, they don’t move.”
The Supreme Court ruled last week that homeless people can be ticketed and fined for camping on public property in a landmark decision, which will likely lead to cities across the country to take legal action against the unhoused.
Last year, about 650,000 individuals in the US lacked a permanent place to live, according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, a 12% increase from 2022 and the most since tracking began in 2007.
New Hampshire
Possible 2028 Democratic White House contenders weigh in on Iran with New Hampshire voters
As the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran overtakes the foreign policy debate in Washington, two Democratic governors with potential 2028 presidential aspirations — Gavin Newsom and Andy Beshear — recently traveled to New Hampshire, introducing themselves to the state’s famously engaged voters. The two weighed in on the war and both criticized and questioned President Trump’s strategy and endgame.
“If a president is going to take a country into war, and risk the lives of American troops and Americans in the region, he has to have a real justification and not one that seems to change every five to 10 hours,” Beshear told CBS News after a Democratic fundraiser in Keene.
“This President seems to use force before ever trying diplomacy, and he has a duty to sell it to the American people and to address Congress with it,” Beshear continued. “He hasn’t done any of that. In fact, it appears there isn’t even a plan for what success looks like. He’s gone from regime change to strategic objectives and now is talking about unconditional surrender, which isn’t realistic where he is.”
Beshear also said he thought that Congress should have reined in Mr. Trump’s war powers.
“He is trying to ignore Congress. He’s trying to even ignore the American people,” Beshear said.
He went on to note that the president’s State of the Union address took place “three — four days before he launched this attack,” and Mr. Trump “didn’t even have the respect to tell the American people the threat that he thought Iran posed to us.”
Last week, both the House and the Senate failed to pass resolutions to limit Mr. Trump’s war powers and stop him from taking further military action against Iran without congressional support.
For Newsom, the war with Iran constitutes part of a broader criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
At an event last Tuesday in Los Angeles, Newsom had compared Israel to an “apartheid state.” Later, in New Hampshire, he sought to clarify his comment.
“I was specifically referring to a Tom Friedman [New York Times] column last week, where Tom used that word of apartheid as it relates to the direction Bibi is going, particularly on the annexation of the West Bank,” Newsom explained during a book tour event Thursday night in Portsmouth. “I’m very angry, with what he is doing and why he’s doing it, what he’s going to ultimately try to do to the Supreme Court there, what he’s trying to do to save his own political career.”
Friedman wrote that at the same time that the U.S. and Israel are prosecuting a war in Iran, within Israel, Netanyahu’s government has undertaken efforts to annex the West Bank, driving Palestinians from their homes; fire the attorney general who is leading the prosecution against Netanyahu for corruption; and block the government’s attempt to establish a commission to examine the failures that led up to the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Jews by Hamas.
CBS News has reached out to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., for comment.
On Iran, Newsom said, “I’m very angry about this war, with all due respect, you know, not because I’m angry the supreme leader is dead. Quite the contrary. I’m not naive about the last 37 years of his reign. Forty-seven years since ’79 — the revolution,” Newsom said. “But I’m also mindful that you have a president who still is inarticulate and incapable of giving us the rationale of why? Why now? What’s the endgame?”
Many attendees at Newsom’s book event said that the situation in Iran is a top-of-mind issue for them, too. Some said they’re “horrified” by what is happening.
29-year-old Alicia Marr told CBS News she decided to attend Newsom’s event because of his social media response to the war with Iran.
“There was one spot left, and I decided to pick it up, and it was due to his response to the war, that it is just unacceptable, and I would agree with that,” Marr said.
While some voters like Marr are eager to hear about where potential candidates stand on foreign policy, many at Newsom’s event said they care most about how potential candidates plan to address domestic issues.
“I’m more focused on getting the middle class back on track and fighting the oligarchy, and I’m less invested in international issues,” said Anita Alden, who also attended Newsom’s event,
“I wouldn’t call myself America first, but we have so many problems at home that are my priority,” she told CBS News.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who may also be weighing another White House bid, told Fox 2 Detroit last week that she “unequivocally opposes” the Trump administration’s military action in Iran and urged Congress to take action.
“If we want to stop Donald Trump with this random decision that he has arrived at, then Congress must act, and Congress must act immediately. The American people do not want our sons and daughters to go into this unauthorized war of choice,” Harris said.
Mr. Trump has lashed out against Democrats who have pushed back on his Iran strategy, calling them “losers” last week and arguing that they would criticize any decision he made on Iran.
“If I did it, it’s no good. If I didn’t do it, they would have said the opposite, that you should have done this,” the president said.
Local News
Police say the Attleboro man was driving 104 mph in a 55 mph zone on Route 202 near in Rindge, New Hampshire.
A Massachusetts man was arrested late Wednesday night after police say he was driving more than 100 mph on a New Hampshire roadway.
Officers with the Rindge Police Department stopped a vehicle shortly after 11 p.m. on Route 202 near Sears Drive in Rindge following a report of a car traveling at excessive speed, according to a statement from Chief Rachel Malynowski.
The vehicle, a 2020 Kia Stinger, was spotted traveling at 104 mph in a posted 55 mph zone, Malynowski said.
The driver, a 21-year-old man from Attleboro, was arrested and charged with reckless operation of a motor vehicle, according to police.
He is scheduled to be arraigned April 5. If convicted, the man faces a fine of at least $750, in addition to the court’s penalty assessment, and a 90-day license suspension, Malynowski said.
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