Eagle-Tribune and Foster's Daily Democrat Staff
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GREENLAND, N.H. — Five police officers have been shot, including this small seacoast community's police chief, by a man they were trying to serve with a search warrant near Interstate 95 earlier this evening.
Several media outlets are reporting the officer killed was police Chief Michael Maloney, who was set to retire April 20. The conditions of the other officers is unknown. At a 10 p.m. press conference, authorities refused to identify the officers shot.
The suspect and a woman remain barricaded inside the home with officers from numerous communities surrounding the home. According to numerous media outlets, the suspect has been identified as 20-year-old Cullen Mutrie.
Mutrie, 29, was arrested in February and charged with possession of anabolic steroids. Seacoastonline.com reported police found liquid liquid and powder steroids when they went to Mutrie's home to seize guns following an arrest on charges alleging domestic assault. According to an affidavit by Officer Wayne Young, the steroids were found in Mutrie's living room coffee table on July 24, 2010, but were not verified as steroids by the state crime lab until Jan. 18.
The officers injured were taken to Portsmouth Regional Hospital which is currently closed off. Gov. John Lynch is en route to the hospital, where dozens of police officers are standing guard.
According to seacoastonline.com, two of the officers shot were drug enforcement officers. Seacoastonline.com also reported a neighbor heard gunshots fired and saw police run from the house. She believed it was a drug bust "gone bad."
Three teenagers who were on their way to visit a friend on Moulton Road, near Post Road, earlier this evening were greeted by police who told them to turn around and leave. After leaving, the teens talked to their friend on the phone who told them that houses around his were being hit by bullets and that he saw a police officer clutching his chest and bleeding.
The teen who lives on Moulton Road also told his friends that he saw SWAT teams crouching in the driveway of a home he believed is the shooter's.
A police broadcast indicated three people are being held in the basement of the home and it is surrounded by police personnel.
In addition, a couple who live on Post Road, they were told to stay in their basement earlier this evening, but now, according to WMUR, neighbors surrounding the home are being evacuated.
Seacoastonline.com says six to eight ambulances are at the home, as well as a Bearcat armored vehicle.
Heavily armed police have set up a perimeter in the vicinity of a shooting incident. Police from several towns, a SWAT team, and DEA agents are in the staging area at the Greenland Central School on Post Road.
Police are armed with assault rifles and they have shut down Post and Breakfast Hill roads, according to seacoastonline.com. So far, police confirmed to be at the scene include Rye, Greenland, Stratham, Portsmouth, Exeter and New Castle.
More on the story as it develops.
- Associated Press contributed to this report
