IAPE Evidence Blog

www.seacoastonline.com
BYLINE: Eliz­a­beth Dinan
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Portsmouth, NH

PORTSMOUTH — When Hung Nguyen bur­glar­ized a Win­sor Road home two years ago, he left his DNA on a beer bot­tle, lead­ing to his Thurs­day arrest, say police.

Nguyen, 40, with no per­ma­nent arrest, is charged with a felony count of bur­glary and is being held on $20,000 cash-only bail.

Accord­ing to an affi­davit by Detec­tive Tim­o­thy Cash­man, police were recently noti­fied by the state crime lab that DNA from saliva on a Heineken bot­tle obtained by police at the crime scene was deter­mined to be a match to Nguyen. Based on that evi­dence, police allege Nguyen bur­glar­ized the res­i­dence on Nov. 8, 2007.

Accord­ing to police, Nguyen is being held in Mass­a­chu­setts by fed­eral immi­gra­tion author­i­ties and has active war­rants for his arrest out of Cal­i­for­nia and Wis­con­sin. He is also alleged to have recently com­pleted a Mass­a­chu­setts prison sen­tence for break­ing and enter­ing in the day­time and is known by a dozen dif­fer­ent aliases.

Nguyen was arraigned by video in Portsmouth Dis­trict Court Thurs­day, when he requested a pub­lic defender and a Viet­namese inter­preter. He is sched­uled to appear in the court on Feb. 2 for a prob­a­ble cause hearing.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org

Con­cord Mon­i­tor (New Hamp­shire)
BYLINE: SHIRA SCHOENBERG, Mon­i­tor staff

Spring­field, NH

The young man whose alleged threats caused a mod­i­fied lock­down in Kearsarge schools Mon­day broke into the Spring­field police sta­tion, stole a shot­gun and fired four shots before being taken into cus­tody, the police said.

The 19-year-old was found walk­ing on a street in Spring­field on Mon­day evening, and he is being held in a secure facil­ity at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Med­ical Cen­ter, where a psy­chi­a­trist has deemed him sui­ci­dal, Spring­field Police Chief Tim­o­thy Julian said. Julian expects that crim­i­nal charges will be forthcoming.

“The rea­son he stated (for the bur­glary and shoot­ing) was because he wanted to die and he was going to shoot him-self,” Julian said. “Then he decided he’d rather point the gun at a police offi­cer and have the police offi­cer shoot him.”

The Mon­i­tor is not iden­ti­fy­ing the young man, because he has not yet been charged with a crime. The police have not released his name. Mean­while, Kearsarge schools resumed nor­mal sched­ules yes­ter­day with the news that the man had been located. On Mon­day, all out­door and after-school activ­i­ties were can­celed in each of the region’s schools.

The inci­dent started when the man, a for­mer senior at Kearsarge Regional High School who left school ear­lier this year, told friends over the inter­net Sun­day evening that he planned to com­mit sui­cide. Accord­ing to Kearsarge Regional School Dis­trict Super­in­ten­dent Thomas Bren­nan, he also told one friend “not to go to school” Monday.

On Sun­day night, the Spring­field police got a call about a sui­ci­dal per­son and started look­ing for that per­son, Julian said. Then, about 11 p.m., Julian returned to the police sta­tion and dis­cov­ered that it had been bro­ken into. A bur­glar had dam­aged the entrance door, bro­ken into the evi­dence room, stolen a shot­gun, and shot a hole through the wall of the police depart­ment, hit­ting a wall and win­dow. The police did not orig­i­nally con­nect the two incidents.

While he was try­ing to check on the sui­ci­dal per­son, Julian said he heard a gun­shot from the tree line of a recrea-tional field near the police depart­ment. He called for help from police depart­ments in New Lon­don and Sunapee, as well as the State Police. Julian and Sergeant Michael Beaulieu started check­ing the area when they heard a sec­ond shot. Julian called in a State

Police heli­copter and the West­ern New Hamp­shire Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Unit.“We searched the area, checked and checked,” Julian said. “When day­light came up, we called the search because he was nowhere in the area. We couldn’t find him.”

About 11 a.m. Mon­day, Beaulieu found the miss­ing shot­gun in the woods. About 5 p.m., the police found the man walk­ing along Route 114 in Spring­field. The 19-year-old had lived in sev­eral places but was cur­rently liv­ing with a per-son whose home is on Route 114.  Julian said he was com­pli­ant, and taken into cus­tody with­out trou­ble. “He didn’t have a firearm. He was just walk-ing down the road,” Julian said. “He hadn’t eaten in two days. He was still in the same state of mind, but he was tired.”

The police brought him to Dartmouth-Hitchcock, where he was eval­u­ated and found to be sui­ci­dal. When Julian spoke to the man, he con­fessed to the bur­glary and to fir­ing the shots, Julian said. The man has one prior con­vic­tion as an adult for crim­i­nal mis­chief, Julian said.

Julian antic­i­pates that charges of bur­glary, caus­ing pub­lic alarm, and reck­less con­duct will be forth­com­ing. The caus­ing pub­lic alarm charge will apply to both his con­duct with the firearm and to the inci­dent that led to the schools’ mod­i­fied lock­down, although both the police and the super­in­ten­dent said there was never a direct threat com­mu­ni­cated to the school.

Sev­eral friends said Mon­day that the man had seri­ous emo­tional prob­lems. Yes­ter­day, his close friend John Dukette, whom the Mon­i­tor con­tacted through the social net­work­ing site MySpace, said he hopes the man can “just get his head straight­ened back up, and let him back in school.”

Dukette said the man faced dif­fi­cult times but was just about to start a new job. He wrote in a mes­sage to the Moni-tor that the man was “prob­a­bly the nicest per­son you could meet, He’d do any­thing for his friends and he treated them like family.”

With poten­tial dan­ger to the schools averted, Bren­nan said yes­ter­day that he was proud of the district’s staff and their coop­er­a­tion with the local police. Bren­nan said the dis­trict has worked on its emer­gency man­age­ment plan for years. “We iden­ti­fied a cou­ple of areas, like com­mu­ni­ca­tion, that we need to tighten up, but over­all I’m very con­fi­dent that our plan that we had in place worked effec­tively for us,” Bren­nan said.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org