New Hampshire – The Northeast’s ski season officially kicked off last week.

After a warm start to the month, a cold stretch last week across the Northeast allowed various ski areas to open up for the season or temporarily. This included Killington, Sunday River, Sommet Saint Sauveur, Belleayre, Gore, Whiteface, and Bretton Woods. Situated across the street from the famous Omni Mt. Washington Resort, the New Hampshire ski area opened on Saturday with two trails and two lifts operating.

I decided to head up to Bretton Woods to experience their opening day. I decided over Killington because while its my favorite ski resort in New England, it can be a crowded experience during those first couple of days.

Lift tickets at Bretton Woods this past weekend were $72. This is a bit pricey for opening day, but they offered a $10 discount if you brought a non-perishable food item as part of their “Say Goodbye to Hunger” Food Drive.

One of the lifts that was open was the Learning Center Quad. This lift services Rosebrook Meadow, a mellow beginner trail. It’s nice to get your sea legs back on this run, but it kind of gets boring for more tenured skiers and riders after a few turns.

The main trail that was open was Range View, which was serviced by the Zephyr High-Speed Quad. It has two small steep sections, but its relative mellowness makes it a beginner piste. The snow was soft and buttery. Crowds were minimal across the ski area, so it allowed for peace of mind.

As the photos show, there was a small snowpack. However, there wasn’t any indication of a thin base (e.g., grass and rocks) on the slopes.

Overall, I was impressed by the snow quality for opening day. These early-season days are typically icy endeavors, but this wasn’t close to that. The above-average temperatures helped with the snowpack’s quality, but the conditions also showed the strength of Bretton Woods’ snowmaking and grooming team.

Bretton Woods will be closed for the next several days. Conditions permitting, the New Hampshire ski area aims to reopen this weekend.

Image/Video Credits: Ian Wood, Bretton Woods

Related

In the days and weeks after last November’s shooting inside New Hampshire Hospital, a lot of information came out about the gunman.

John Madore had a history of schizophrenia, and had previously been a patient at New Hampshire Hospital, a state-run psychiatric facility. Madore was transient, staying in hotels, but in regular contact with loved ones.

An investigation by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office revealed that Madore obtained the pistol he used to kill Bradley Haas, a security guard stationed in the hospital lobby, from a licensed firearms dealer, even though he was prohibited from having a gun because of his past psychiatric commitments.

The attorney general’s report, released in August, also outlined Madore’s whereabouts that day, before he pulled a rented U-Haul loaded with an additional gun and ammunition into the parking lot of the hospital. The investigatory report included still images and a detailed timeline, but the state declined to release any video footage, despite its longstanding practice of doing so at the conclusion of its investigations into officer-involved shootings.

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NHPR recently obtained five videos from the state, with angles from both inside and outside the hospital lobby, including a birds eye view that shows the main entrance, security desk and most of the lobby. Portions of the video are redacted or blurred; the state said that decision was made to protect the privacy interests of the families involved.

We sought the footage, through a Right to Know request, with two main goals: To better understand what happened that day and see what, if anything, could have been done differently. And second, to try to understand what changes could be made to improve security.

Here’s what we learned.

What the videos show

The main video from inside the lobby is approximately 30 minutes in length.

Jeff Czarnec, one of two experts NHPR asked to review the footage, served 23 years in law enforcement in Manchester, and now teaches criminal justice at Southern New Hampshire University.

He described the layout of the lobby as appealing and bright, which is important for a psychiatric facility, but that the metal detectors near the entrance could be easily skirted.

“Those are great to have in place,” said Czarnec. “But they’re not necessarily a deterrent to someone who’s looking to do harm.”

And that’s clearly what Madore was looking to do.

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The video shows him walking from the parking lot dressed in black pants, a flannel shirt and a vest. He moves quickly. As soon as he enters the lobby through the sliding glass doors, he reaches his right hand into his right pocket without breaking stride, and pulls out a gun.

“He just comes right in, and he was fully prepared. I don’t think he even had two feet inside when he started shooting,” Czarnec said.

The video shows Bradley Haas, the security guard, standing at a table next to the metal detector, looking at his phone. He barely has time to lift his head before he’s shot.

“A matter of seconds. There’s no prep, there’s no warning,” Czarnec said.

Haas was a 28-year veteran of the Franklin Police force, rising to the rank of chief. Since retiring from that position, he had been working as a security guard at New Hampshire Hospital for more than three years.

There were questions afterwards about why someone in that position — with his level of experience — wasn’t armed. Attorney General John Formella was asked about this by reporters the day after the shooting, and said that “it wouldn’t be typical for that position to be armed, working the security in the front lobby.”

During the legislative session this year, a bipartisan bill sought to close a perceived gap in the background check reporting system that Madore took advantage of to buy the gun.

Republican state Rep. J.R. Hoell, speaking on the House floor, said the problem wasn’t state gun laws, but instead that Haas wasn’t carrying a gun that day, to protect himself and others.

“So why was the person manning the security booth, manning the metal detector, not carrying a personal firearm that day?” Hoell asked.

There’s no consensus nationally about whether armed security guards are appropriate for acute psychiatric facilities. But what this video from last November makes clear is that having a gun may not have saved Bradley Haas that day.

“Even if he’d been armed, there aren’t many measures you could take that would have prevented what we saw [that day],” said Brian Higgins, who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who also reviewed the hospital security footage at NHPR’s request. “It’s almost as if he didn’t have a chance.”

A state trooper confronts the gunman

After Madore shoots Haas, he walks around the lobby firing at bullet proof windows, though that section of the video has been redacted. The attorney general describes in its report that Madore ultimately fires again at Haas while he’s on the ground.

The next set of doors into the hospital are locked, however. Madore is essentially blocked from getting any further into the building.

Approximately 22 seconds after Madore fired his first shot, state trooper Nathan Sleight can be seen on the right side of the frame. He cracks open the door to an office connected to the lobby, where he had been positioned when the gunfire broke out.

Madore sees him, but continues trying to reload his gun. According to the report, Sleight ordered Madore to drop the weapon, but there is no audio footage from the lobby.

Sleight then opens fire from a protected position.

“The trooper there is doing all the right things by virtue of training: conceal and cover,” said Czarnec.

Madore drops to the ground, wounded, leaning up against a wall. He keeps moving his hands, though, trying to reload.

Sleight fires a second time: The muzzle flashes in rapid succession.

“He then shoots again to make sure that that threat is over,” Higgins said. “So I don’t have an issue with that at all. As a matter of fact, that’s good tactics.”

In total, Sleight fired 11 shots, emptying his magazine. The attorney general would later rule he was justified in his use of force; both experts we asked to review this footage agreed with that conclusion.

Just seconds after Madore is shot, the glass sliding doors leading out onto the sidewalk open again. A man wanders into the lobby. The report would later identify this person as a patient of the hospital. He can be seen walking over to Madore, and then to Haas. Sleight quickly ushers him outside.

In the video, Sleight runs to his cruiser parked out front to grab more ammunition; then he runs out of the lobby a second time to grab his bullet proof vest.

Within minutes, Concord police officers and more state troopers are on scene.

They provide cover while Haas is pulled bleeding from the lobby, and transported to nearby Concord Hospital, where he later dies.

Madore is dead at the scene.

A resilient staff remembers a colleague

New Hampshire Hospital had a patient count of 153 the day of the shooting. There were dozens of doctors, nurses, and other staff in the building. In the five minutes before the shooting, 13 people passed through the hospital’s lobby, according to the footage NHPR reviewed.

By pure chance, the lobby was empty — except for the security guard — when Madore entered.

“It is really a great thing that, despite the tragedy, the event was contained in this area and it really could have been far worse than it was,” Ellen Lapointe, New Hampshire Hospital’s CEO, recently said while giving a tour of the lobby.

In the aftermath of the shooting, there were changes made to how staff and visitors enter the building. For instance, the glass sliding doors from the outside no longer open automatically into the lobby.

This will slow down, in theory, anyone looking to do harm.

Everyone now needs a badge or has to check-in to enter. There is also now an armed law enforcement officer positioned in the lobby during visitor hours.

Next January, a major construction project that was already in the works will completely overhaul the entry and traffic flow.

But for now, this space is the main in-and-out point for staff.

Every day, they’re walking right past where their colleague Bradley Haas was killed.

Lapointe says it’s been a hard year.

“There’s been a tremendous amount of resiliency of the staff and a really great focus on patient care, as well as honoring Brad’s memory and really remembering him, for the positive, kind, helpful gentleman that he was,” said Lapointe. “And trying to not focus on the tragedies that occurred here.”