Suspect in N.H. Killing Rampage Is Slain

A man who apparently held a long-standing grudge against a judge killed her, two state troopers and a newspaper editor Tuesday during a wild three-hour rampage that ended when police shot him to death.

Four other law enforcement officials were wounded, three of them as they pursued the gunman through the small towns and wooded areas of rural New Hampshire and Vermont. The man, identified as Carl Drega, was finally killed in a firefight with nearly two dozen officers.

The slain judge, Vickie Bunnell, had once gotten a restraining order against Drega, 67, whom she called a “time bomb,” friends and colleagues said.

Her troubles with him dated to at least 1991, when, as a selectwoman in the small town of Columbia, she had him removed in handcuffs from the town hall over a zoning dispute.

Tuesday’s rampage began about 2:45 p.m. when troopers traveling in separate patrol cars pulled over Drega’s red pickup truck for an unspecified violation, said New Hampshire Atty. Gen. Philip McLaughlin. Drega, wearing a bulletproof vest, shot both troopers dead with an assault rifle.

He fled the scene in one of the patrol cars and drove to a building housing the offices of Bunnell, a part-time District Court judge, and the editor of the weekly News and Sentinel of Colebrook.

“Vickie screamed and ran through our offices, ‘It’s Drega. He’s got a gun,’ ” reporter Kenn Stransky said. “He shot her in the back. She died instantly.”

Stransky said the paper’s editor, Dennis Joos, was shot to death when he struggled with the gunman.

Everyone else in the building fled out the back.

After killing Bunnell, 44, and Joos, the suspect jumped back into the stolen cruiser and raced across the Connecticut River into Bloomfield, Vt., where a witness saw him open fire on state Fish and Game Officer Wayne Saunders, hitting his badge with one bullet and his arm with another.

“He stopped under the underpass, jumped out of the car and shot,” said Doris Mills, who works in a store there.

The wounded Saunders apparently slumped against the accelerator and his patrol car swerved into some trees.

“If he hadn’t hit the trees, he would have gone into the river,” Mills said.

He was listed in fair condition at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H.

As the chase continued, a U.S. Border Patrol agent and two New Hampshire state troopers were also wounded.

The Border Patrol agent and one of the troopers were hospitalized. The other trooper was only slightly hurt, authorities said. The Border Patrol officer was listed in critical condition.

Hordes of heavily armed law enforcement officers searched for Drega for a time on a logging road around Maidstone Lake, Vt., south of Bloomfield, then chased him back into New Hampshire, where he ran into the woods, where he was killed.

A reporter flying into Colebrook on Tuesday saw a home identified as Drega’s burned to the ground and still smoldering in Columbia, N.H.

The house that burned was believed to be the one at the center of the earlier zoning dispute.