Carl Drega

Carl Drega (January 19, 1935 – August 19, 1997) was a man from Bow, New Hampshire,, The Boston Globe, August 22nd, 1997 who killed two state troopers, a judge and a newspaper editor and wounded three other law enforcement officers before being shot to death in a firefight with police. The book The Ballad of Carl Drega by Vin Suprynowicz is named for him.

Drega had a long history of conflict with government officials over code enforcement issues, starting in the 1970s over whether he could use tarpaper to side his vacation house in Columbia, New Hampshire. He claimed that in 1981, of the riverbank along his property collapsed during a rainstorm. Drega decided to dump and pack enough dirt to repair the erosion damage, saying this would restore his lot along the Connecticut River to its original size. State officials, on the other hand, contested that Drega was trying to change the course of the river. In 1995, the town selectman Vickie Bunnell accompanied a town tax assessor to Drega's property in a dispute over an assessment. Drega fired shots into the air to drive them away. Drega bought an AR-15 rifle and armor vest, and began equipping his property with early-warning electronic noise and motion detectors.

On August 19, 1997, at about 2:30, two New Hampshire state troopers, Scott Phillips and Les Lord, stopped Drega in the parking lot of LaPerle's IGA supermarket in neighboring Colebrook, New......
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