Traffic was at a standstill yesterday evening on the Lyman Bridge as police ordered four occupants out of a white pickup truck at gunpoint on the Vermont/New Hampshire border. All photos © Eric Francis.
WHITE RIVER JUNCTION - Police in Lebanon and Hartford were involved in a trio of unrelated but unusually public incidents Tuesday afternoon and evening that ultimately netted only one arrest.
In the most dramatically visible incident, officers from Lebanon and Hartford briefly detained four people at gunpoint around 6:30 p.m. on the Lyman Bridge connecting Vermont and New Hampshire, before letting all of them go.
Lebanon Police Sergeant James Pike, who was in charge at the scene, said officers initially stopped the white pickup truck with Vermont plates just as it was about to re-enter Vermont because of reports it had been involved in a serious incident a short time beforehand.
Several eyewitnesses in the nearby LISTEN Center parking lot and an apartment building that overlooks the bridge said officers ordered two men and two women to get out of the pickup truck at gunpoint, before placing them in the back seats of some of the half-dozen police cars that responded to the scene.
Police said that after everyone was questioned separately, they determined the incident that had initially been reported had not actually taken place—and everyone was free to go.
The occupants were detained for several minutes in handcuffs while officers conducted interviews before determining there was no threat. After a brief explanation, police shook hands with the driver and let the group drive off from the stop without further action.
Earlier in the afternoon, Lebanon officers, including members of New Hampshire’s drug task force, backed up by a Hartford officer with a police canine, stopped a car on Maple Street in the neighborhood behind West Lebanon’s Kilton Library that is heavily used by buses and cars and spent several minutes interviewing a couple in connection with an on-going drug investigation before ultimately letting them go as well.
Finally, at around 9:30 p.m., police in Hartford wound up in a scuffle with a homeless man who had already been the focus of numerous complaints throughout the day for alleged incidents of “very aggressive” behavior toward patrons and staff at several businesses along both North and South Main Streets in White River Junction.
John Cadogan, 41, who is originally from the Rutland area, has been hanging around downtown White River Junction for months, and even saved a fellow homeless man’s life earlier this summer in Lyman Point Park when he administered Narcan and performed CPR after the other man overdosed.
In recent days, however, Cadogan has reportedly been acting erratically and threatening passersby, resulting in a number of police encounters that included a disorderly conduct citation around 3 p.m. Tuesday.
After dealing with incidents involving Cadogan throughout most of the day Tuesday police tried to offer him assistance after he was found sleeping under a white blanket on South Main Street.
Police encountered Cadogan again around 9:30 p.m., after receiving a report that he was lying underneath a white blanket in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the Gates Building. Patrons of several downtown establishments had to walk around him.
Cadogan initially refused offers of help, then eventually got up and began throwing juice bottles and other items into the street before yelling at police and calling them “terrorists” and other names.
Following a struggle that lasted for a couple of minutes, Hartford officers managed to get Cadogan into handcuffs.
After several attempts to get him to move along and to stop yelling failed, officers moved in to take Cadogan into custody on the sidewalk in front of the former Post Office Building, which now serves as the headquarters of the Center for Cartoon Studies. Cadogan fought their efforts to get him into handcuffs for several minutes and repeatedly slammed his head into the masonry at the front of the building, before officers wrestled him to the ground and called in an ambulance to have him checked out.
Last week, Cadogan built an impromptu art project on a South Main Street sidewalk out of a collection of objects he’d found.
After repeated attempts to cajole him into accepting a ride to the hospital rather than going to jail, Cadogan agreed to go to DHMC, where he reportedly fled from the waiting room before being seen in the emergency department. As of late Tuesday evening, Lebanon Police were still searching for him.
