8-year-old girl found dead in car after cops fatally shoot her dad, NH officials say

A man accused of killing his wife in New Hampshire was shot and killed by police after her body was found, law enforcement officials said.

After the shooting, officers located a child’s body inside the man’s car on the Piscataqua River Bridge on Aug. 29, the New Hampshire Department of Justice said in a news release. The bridge links Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Kittery, Maine.

The 8-year-old girl was fatally shot, officials said at an Aug. 29 news conference. She was the daughter of the man and his wife. Authorities didn’t publicly identify them.

The child’s “death is not associated with the officers’ use of deadly force,” Maine State Police said in an Aug. 29 news release.

The circumstances of her death are being investigated, according to authorities, who said the Maine Attorney General’s Office is investigating the officer-involved shooting.

Earlier on Aug. 29, the New Hampshire Department of Justice announced there was an investigation into a woman’s “suspicious death” that happened overnight in Troy.

Around 2:07 a.m. on Aug. 29, the man called 911, saying he fought with his wife and that she was dead, according to Maine State Police.

Then the man’s car was found parked on the Piscataqua River Bridge on the Maine side around 2:30 a.m., police said.

Authorities from New Hampshire and Maine attempted to negotiate with the man before he eventually stepped out of his car with a firearm raised, according to police.

One Maine state trooper and two New Hampshire state troopers fired at him, killing him, police said.

His body was found in the water underneath the bridge, according to police.

The Piscataqua River Bridge on Interstate 95 was closed for several hours on Aug. 29 due to the incident, WMTW reported.

The bridge is about a 60-mile drive northeast from Boston.

This story was originally published August 29, 2024 at 12:33 PM with the headline "8-year-old girl found dead in car after cops fatally shoot her dad, NH officials say."

Julia Marnin

McClatchy DC

Julia Marnin covers courts for McClatchy News, writing about criminal and civil affairs, including cases involving policing, corrections, civil liberties, fraud, and abuses of power. As a reporter on McClatchy’s National Real-Time Team, she’s also covered the COVID-19 pandemic and a variety of other topics since joining in 2021, following a fellowship with Newsweek. Born in Biloxi, Mississippi, she was raised in South Jersey and is now based in New York State.