August 19, 1997 - Carl Drega - An army veteran and local troubemaker snapped over a routine traffic stop leaving a judge, two state troopers and a newspaper editor dead in his wake before being shot to death by a swarm of officers in a 45-minute firefight.
 

Carl Drega (January 19, 1935–August 19, 1997) was a man from Columbia, New Hampshire, who killed 2 state troopers, a judge and a newspaper editor and wounded three other law enforcement officers before being shot to death in a firefight with police. The book The Ballad of Carl Drega by Vin Suprynowicz is named for him.

Drega had long battled with government officials, starting with a fight in the 1970s over whether he could use tarpaper to side his house. He claimed that in 1981, 80 feet of the riverbank along his property collapsed during a rainstorm. Drega decided to dump and pack enough dirt to repair the erosion damage, saying this would restore his lot along the Connecticut River to its original size. State officials, on the other hand, accused Drega of trying to change the course of the river.

In 1995, the town selectman Vickie Bunnell, accompanied a town tax assessor to Drega's property in a dispute over an assessment. Drega fired shots into the air to drive them away. Drega bought an AR-15 rifle and armour vest, and began equipping his property with early-warning electronic noise and motion detectors.

On August 19, 1997, at about 2:30, two New Hampshire State Troopers, Scott Phillips and Les Lord, stopped Drega in the parking lot of LaPerle's IGA supermarket in neighboring Colebrook, New Hampshire, for a "perception of defects" in his pickup truck. Drega shot and killed both troopers.

Drega then commandeered their vehicle and drove to the office of former selectman, now lawyer and part-time judge, Vickie Bunnell. Bunnell reportedly carried a handgun in her purse out of fear of Drega. She warned the staffers in the building to get out and before she herself left by the back door. Drega walked to the rear of the building and shot her in the back from a range of about 30 feet. Bunnell died. Dennis Joos, editor of the local Colebrook News and Sentinel, worked in the office next door. Unarmed, he ran out and tackled Drega. Drega walked about 15 feet with Joos still clutching him around the legs, then shot Joos in the back, killing him.

Drega then drove across the state line to Bloomfield, Vermont, where he fired at New Hampshire Fish and Game Warden Wayne Saunders, sending his car off the road. Saunders was struck on the badge and in the arm, but his injuries were not considered life-threatening. Police from various agencies soon spotted the abandoned police cruiser Drega had been driving. As they approached the vehicle, they began taking fire from a nearby hilltop where Drega had positioned himself, apparently still armed with the AR-15 and about 150 rounds of ammunition. He managed to wound two more New Hampshire state troopers and a U.S. Border Patrol agent before he himself was killed by police gunfire.

Carl Drega

A local troublemaker and former soldier, Carl Drega blasted his way to infamy on August 19, 1997 when he killed a New Hampshire judge, two state troopers, a newspaper editor and wounded four officers in a three-hour rampage.

The carnage began at about 2:45 p.m. outside a grocery store in Colebrook, a tiny town just south of the Canadian border, when Drega killed two New Hampshire state troopers.

He shot the first trooper, Scott Phillips, with an assault rifle after he was pulled over for having excessive rust on the back of his red pickup truck. Unaware of shots being fired, the second trooper arrived and was immediately shot dead. Then Drega finished off the wounded Phillips with four pistol shots at point-blank range. Drega then took a bullet-proof vest and fled the crime scene in one of the officer's patrol car.

Drega, 62, drove to a building housing both the offices of part-time Judge Vickie Bunnell -- a former Columbia selectwoman who he had tangled with repeatedly over property disputes -- and the weekly News and Sentinel newspapers. Before being shot in the back in the building's parking lot, Judge Bunnell ran through the offices of the newspaper shouting: "It's Drega. He's got a gun!" Next Drega shot Dennis Joos, paper's editor, eight times as they struggled for the gun. Everyone else in the building fled out the back door.

The slain judge had once obtained a restraining order against Drega, whom she called a "time bomb." Her troubles with him dated back to 1991, when she had him removed in handcuffs from the town hall over a zoning dispute. Not satisfied with the carnage, Drega jumped back into the stolen cruiser and raced across the Connecticut River and went looking for another town official, Kenenth Parkhurst, who was also involved in his zoning dispute. Fortunately Mr. Parkhurst was not home. He was at a dentist appointment and his wife was visiting a relative. In a tailspin Drega decided return to his own clapboard house in Columbia -- the property involved in the alleged planning violations -- and burn it to the ground.

Next he drove to Bloomfield, Vermont, where he shot at a fish and game officer. The injured deputy apparently slumped against the accelerator, and his patrol car swerved into some trees. Drega then abandoned the stolen police cruiser and waited for more officers to show up. The rampager positioned himself to ambush anyone who approached the cruiser. Fortunately a police dog sensed the danger and snapped to a position signaling, "alert." In all, three officers were wounded in the 45-minute ensuing firefight that ended with Drega's death.

Officers searching through the burnt hulk of his house discovered a cache of explosives and a series of booby-traps in an "elaborate system of tunnels" surrounding the property. It included 600lb of ammonium nitrate and 60 gallons of diesel fuel, the lethal cocktail used by McVeigh & Co. in the Oklahoma City bombing. State police also found bomb-making books and a weapons manual in the smoldering ruins of his home.

As a precaution ATF agents decided to torch Drega's barn -- called by one official a booby-trapped "bomb-making factory" -- to avoid any further injuries to investigating law officers at the site. Witnesses to the fire counted up to 40 small explosions inside the structure as it burned. The New Hamshire Attorney General Philip McLaughlin said it was not clear whether Drega had planned his deadly rampage or was improvising as he went along.

Neighbors said Drega was a rampage waiting to happen. For the last three days they kept hearing him shooting his gun. One neighbor thought he was: "Weirder than a three-dollar bill." Another described him as: "Somebody that you should be goddammned afraid of. He had bad blood for everybody. He was a psycho, a terror." Kenneth Parkhurst -- the man saved by his dentist appointment -- said: "He was extremely clever, but as nutty a man as you'd ever meet. He was one you were afraid to be around because you never knew what he was going to do next."

Rampage in New Hampshire Kills 4 Before Gunman Dies