KITTERY, Maine—A man being pursued in the killing of his wife in New Hampshire was shot by police and tumbled from the Interstate 95 bridge that connects the state to Maine, officials said Thursday. Their 8-year-old boy was found dead in the back seat of the father’s vehicle afterward.
The boy’s death was not caused by gunfire from three law enforcement officials who discharged their firearms after the man stepped out of his vehicle and raised a weapon after failed attempts to negotiate with him, Col. William Ross, chief of Maine State Police, told reporters.
After being shot, the man fell more than 100 feet from the bridge into the Piscataqua River, where his body was retrieved by the U.S. Coast Guard.
The Piscataqua River Bridge was closed for seven hours before reopening during the Thursday morning commute, Maine State Police said. Traffic was backed up on both sides as drivers were diverted to two other bridges.
The episode began with the man calling police shortly after 2 a.m. Thursday to report a domestic altercation with his wife in Troy, New Hampshire, where police found his wife’s body about 100 miles away at a home in the western part of the state, officials said.
Police tracked the man’s vehicle to the 4,500-foot-long span that connects Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Kittery, Maine. Tens of thousands of vehicles cross the bridge daily.
One Maine state trooper and two New Hampshire troopers fired when the man emerged from the vehicle and raised his weapon, Ross said. Witnesses reported hearing gunfire shortly after 4 a.m.
Police didn’t know the boy was in the car and discovered his body in the vehicle’s back seat after the shooting, said Ross, who stressed that it was “abundantly clear” that the boy was not hit by any of the bullets fired by the troopers in the confrontation.
A state police spokesperson declined to provide details but said that assessment was based on observations made by law enforcement officials at the scene.
No names were released on Thursday. The family had recently moved to Troy, and police were having difficulty tracking down family members to make notifications, the spokesperson said.
An autopsy was scheduled Friday for the woman who was shot, after which more information on the investigation will be released, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella and State Police Col. Mark Hall said in a statement.
Between 70,000 and 80,000 vehicles use the Piscataqua bridge each day, according to the Maine Department of Transportation.
The incident occurred at a time of light traffic on I-95 was closed at 2:30 a.m., but lines of cars and trucks began to back up as police blocked traffic in both directions for hours. The man’s body was recovered around 8:30 a.m., Ross said, and the bridge reopened to traffic an hour later.
There are multiple cameras in use on the bridge to monitor traffic, but there is no record of the shooting because they are not set to record, according to Paul Merrill, spokesperson for the Maine Department of Transportation.
By Rodrique Ngowi, Patrick Whittle, and Caleb Jones