Former Franklin Police Chief Bradley Haas was shot and killed while working as a security guard at the New Hampshire Hospital in Concord.
Facebook/Franklin PD
CONCORD — State and local law enforcement officials backed legislation to provide a $100,000 death benefit to the family of Bradley Haas, the New Hampshire Hospital security officer shot to death by a former patient three months ago.
Under current law, only the surviving families of first responders killed in the line of duty automatically receive this one-time, taxpayer-paid death benefit.
Without this bill, the family of Haas is not eligible to receive it.
Haas had been Franklin police chief, but he retired from law enforcement, and in 2019 he joined the New Hampshire Hospital staff as an unarmed security officer.
State Sen. Lou D’Allesandro, D-Manchester, authored the original death benefit law in 2007.
On Wednesday, he testified on the legislation (SB 604), with 19 of his 23 state Senate colleagues signing on as co-sponsors.
“It just seemed to me and my colleagues that something had to be done,” said D’Allesandro, who said he had no discussions with the Haas family about pursuing this bill. “It was an initiative created by this Legislature.”
The bill is specific to the Haas family.
Senate Executive Departments and Administration Committee Chairman Howard Pearl, R-Loudon, said he will propose adding a study committee to examine whether the benefit should be extended to other security personnel in the future. This study would not delay payment of the benefit to the Haas family, Pearl said.
“As I look around, there may be other people working in security, like our own State House security team, that could fall into this,” Pearl said.
The security detail working at the State House includes former state, county and local law enforcement officers.
D’Allesandro embraced the study committee concept.
“Things have changed, and we never had armed security at the State House,” said D’Allesandro, who is in his 30th year as a state legislator. “Circumstances of the day call for something like this.”
Sen. Debra Altschiller, D-Stratham, embraced the bill while arguing that lawmakers need to act on gun control policies that could help prevent such deadly shootings.
“We cannot continue wringing our hands and coming up with new death benefits without doing serious reflection and work on how someone like the person who shot Officer Haas was able to get the firearm in the first place,” Altschiller said.
John Madore, 33, a patient at the psychiatric hospital in 2016-17, walked into the building Nov. 17 and fired his gun before passing through the metal detector, striking Haas.
Haas later died of his injuries.
A short time later, a responding state trooper assigned to the state hospital complex on Clinton Street in Concord fatally shot Madore at the scene.
It remains unclear how Madore, a transient living in Concord, got the gun he used to kill Haas.
Local police confiscated guns from Madore when he was arrested on assault and other charges in 2016. Those charges were dropped.
Shortly after the shooting, a SWAT team found an AR-15-style rifle, a tactical vest, several magazines of ammunition and additional ammunition for the 9 mm handgun that Madore used inside a U-Haul truck at the hospital.
Guards now armed
State Police Capt. Brendan Davey, commander of the division that includes the state office building complex where Haas worked, said that if Haas had been armed, the outcome might have been different.
“The only potential solution to what happened here would have been for an armed person (Haas) to be present and greet that threat at the earliest opportunity,” Davey said.
Gov. Chris Sununu ordered a review after the shooting. A few weeks later, Safety Commissioner Robert Quinn announced a change in policy to require that all state office building security guards be armed.
Franklin Police Chief David Goldstein, who has given seminars on this topic across the state, said more work needs to be done to prevent workplace violence.
In November 1993, Goldstein was a responding officer when a disgruntled male taxpayer came into the Newbury Town Hall and fatally shot two female town employees.
After the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic was over, Goldstein said he visited New Hampshire Hospital and made some suggestions for how to beef up security there.
No changes were made before the Haas shooting, he said.
D’Allesandro’s original bill was named in honor of Michael Briggs, the Manchester patrolman shot to death in 2006.
Since then, lawmakers have broadened those covered under this benefit to include rescue squad members and public works employees along with all police, fire and emergency medical technicians.
In 2022, they changed the law to add that a first responder’s suicide would be a work-related cause of death, making the family eligible for the benefit.
