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PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (AP) — A man connected to a homicide in New Hampshire was fatally shot by police on a bridge that connects the state to Maine. An 8-year-old child was found shot to death in the man’s car, the attorney general’s office said Thursday.
The Piscataqua River Bridge along Interstate 95 has been closed since about 3 a.m. and traffic was backed up on both sides as drivers were diverted to two other bridges. The Piscataqua bridge connects Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Kittery, Maine.
The incident appears to have started with a man killing a woman at a home overnight in Troy, New Hampshire, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) away in the western part of the state, and then driving to the bridge, Attorney General John Formella said in a news release.
“Early this morning police engaged with the adult male on the bridge in an incident that ended with the male being fatally shot. The Maine Attorney General’s Office is now investigating that officer-involved shooting incident,” the news release said.
“Police on the bridge also found an 8-year-old child fatally shot” in the man’s vehicle, the news release said. “The exact circumstances surrounding this incident remain under active investigation.”
There was no threat to the public and the bridge remained closed in both directions because of the investigation, the news release said.
No names have been released.
Between 70,000 and 80,000 vehicles use the Piscataqua bridge each day, according to the Maine Department of Transportation.
Associated Press reporters David Sharp in Portland, Maine, and Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed to this report.
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The opinions expressed below are Jon Keller’s, not those of WBZ, CBS News or Paramount Global.
BOSTON – “Let’s not forget who assaulted democracy on January 6th – [Trump] did,” said Rep. Nancy Pelosi in her speech at the Democratic National Convention.
But as part of their ongoing effort to shift blame for the Capitol riot away from Donald Trump, a Republican-headed oversight committee has released previously unaired video footage of the then-House Speaker, which was turned over to Congress by HBO and obtained by CBS News. It shows a livid Pelosi citing her “responsibility” to protect the House and bemoaning the absence of National Guard troops who might have kept the Capitol Police from being overwhelmed by the mob.
The Republicans claim that proves is was Pelosi who was negligent, not Trump. But former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, a member of the bipartisan commission that investigated the events of that day, said that’s false: “The DC National Guard is controlled by one person – the President of the United States.”
Is Jan. 6 a topic that can work for Republicans this fall?
At their convention, Democrats featured multiple speeches about the riot, including Capitol police officers who tried to hold off the rioters. And in the days and weeks that followed, the top Republicans in Congress took turns blaming and denouncing Trump for sparking the siege.
But instead of changing the subject, Trump has made support for the rioters a part of his campaign, promising to pardon them if elected.
And an expert on New Hampshire politics said keeping Jan. 6 front and center won’t help Trump win wavering swing voters there.
“That’s not their politics, the politics of grievance,” said UNH professor Dante Scala. “Their politics, I think, is a lot more about the politics of normalcy. People who normally vote Republican, they don’t necessarily want to rehash January 6, they’d rather put January 6 down the memory hole. The thing is, the best way to do that is to vote for Harris. The best way to do that is to turn the page.”
Going after Pelosi will surely excite the core Trump base for whom she is a satanic figure.
But Trump already has those voters locked up.
The Harris campaign features the word “forward,” asking voters to move past the Trump era (and maybe the Biden era as well). But even as Trump urges voters to recall the “good old days” when he was president, Harris also wants swing voters in swing states like New Hampshire to remember days like January 6th, when Trump lived up to the nickname Niki Haley gave him during the primaries – “chaos agent.”
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Lawyers for a man charged with raping a teenage girl at a youth holding facility in New Hampshire tried to erode the accuser’s credibility at trial Wednesday, suggesting she had a history of lying and changing her story.
Now 39, Natasha Maunsell was 15 and 16 when she was held at the Youth Detention Services Unit in Concord. Lawyers for Victor Malavet, 62, who faces 12 counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault, say she concocted the allegations in hopes of getting money from a civil lawsuit.
Testifying for a second day at Malavet’s trial, Maunsell acknowledged that she denied having been sexually assaulted when asked in 2002, 2017 and 2019. She said she lied the first time because she was still at the facility and feared retaliation, and again in the later years because she didn’t think anyone would believe her.
“It had been so long that I didn’t think anybody would even care,” she said. “I didn’t think it would matter to anyone … so I kept it in for a long time.”
The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they were sexually assaulted unless they have come forward publicly, as Maunsell has done. She is among more than 1,100 former residents of youth facilities who are suing the state alleging abuse that spanned six decades.
Malavet’s trial opened Monday. It is the first criminal trial arising from a five-year investigation into allegations of abuse at the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester, though unlike the other eight men facing charges, Malavet worked at a different state-run facility where children were held while awaiting court disposition of their cases.
Under questioning from defense lawyer Maya Dominguez, Maunsell acknowledged Wednesday that she lied at age 15 when she told a counselor she had a baby, and that in contrast to her trial testimony, she did not tell police in 2020 that Malavet had kissed her or that he had assaulted her in a storage closet. But she denied the lawyer’s claim that she appeared “angry or exasperated” when questioned about Malavet in 2002.
“I appeared scared,” she said after being shown a video clip from the interview. “I know me, and I looked at me, and I was scared.”
Maunsell also rebutted two attempts to portray her as a liar about money she received in advance of a possible settlement in her civil case. After Dominguez claimed she spent $65,000 on a Mustang, Maunsell said “mustang” was the name of another loan company. And when Dominguez showed her a traffic incident report listing her car as a 2021 Audi and not the 2012 Audi she testified about, Maunsell said the report referred to a newer rental car she was given after she crashed the older car.
In the only civil case to go to trial so far, a jury awarded David Meehan $38 million in May for abuse he says he suffered at the Youth Development Center in the 1990s, though the verdict remains in dispute.
Together, the two trials highlight the unusual dynamic of having the state attorney general’s office simultaneously prosecute those accused of committing offenses and defend the state. While attorneys for the state spent much of Meehan’s trial portraying him as a violent child, troublemaking teenager and a delusional adult, state prosecutors are relying on Mansell’s testimony in the criminal case.
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