When Vickie Bunnell saw the gunman pull up, she ran out the back of her law office. She knew him - she had filed a restraining order against him, even described the longtime local troublemaker as a "time bomb."
Bunnell, a lawyer and part-time judge, ran through the neighboring office of The News and Sentinel, screaming, "It's Drega! He's got a gun!" said reporter Kenn Stransky. The newspaper's editor tried to intervene, and Bunnell fled into the parking lot. But it wasn't enough."He shot her in the back. She died instantly," Stransky said.
Carl Drega, 67, who had feuded with officials for years over zoning and other problems, also killed two state troopers Tuesday and the editor who tried to help Bunnell. He then wounded four other officers before he was killed in a 45-minute gun battle with police.
Authorities found a hit list in his truck with the names of at least two other intended victims, the Concord Monitor reported Wednesday.
The rural quiet of this northern New Hampshire town of 2,400 began disintegrating about 2:45 p.m. when state troopers stopped Dre-ga's red pickup for a traffic violation outside a supermarket.
Within minutes, troopers Scott Phillips, 32, and Leslie Lord, 45, were dead. Drega, wearing a bulletproof vest, shot them both with an assault rifle.
Roland Martin watched Phillips run into a field, shout and drop to the ground. Drega walked to him and fired four more shots. "He just stood right there and went, `Bang, bang, bang, bang,' " Martin said.
Drega hopped into a police cruiser for the short drive to the building that housed the weekly newspaper and Bunnell's law office.
The 44-year-old Bunnell's troubles with Drega dated to at least 1991, when, as a town selectwoman in Columbia, she had him removed in handcuffs from the town hall over a zoning dispute. After one confrontation, Bunnell obtained a restraining order against Drega, Stransky said.
"She said he was a time bomb," he said.
Dennis Joos, 51, the paper's editor, was shot dead when he tried to intervene as Drega chased after Bunnell.
Drega then jumped back into the stolen cruiser and raced across the Connecticut River into Bloomfield, Vt., where witnesses saw him open fire on New Hampshire Fish and Game Officer Wayne Saunders, striking him in the arm. Saunders' badge stopped the other bullet.
"There were shots, lots of them, and they were loud," said Anthony De Banville, who runs a store in Bloomfield.
Saunders, 28, was hospitalized in fair condition Wednesday.
Drega abandoned the shot-up cruiser in Brunswick, Vt., a few miles south.
By then, scores of heavily armed officers were closing in. Drega shot and wounded four men before he took a fatal bullet, said James Walton, Vermont commissioner of public safety.
"It was a firefight. He was on a ridge and in the woods," Walton said. "Whenever he presented himself enough of a target to get a round off, I'm sure they did."
Border Patrol agent John Pfeifer, 33, was shot in the chest and remained in critical condition. New Hampshire trooper Jeffrey Caulder, 32, was shot in the leg was in satisfactory condition. Another trooper was cut on the foot by shrapnel.
Police believe an officer fired the shot that killed Drega, but it won't be clear until an autopsy is performed.
Sometime before the wild, three-hour rampage, Drega apparently torched his home in Columbia, just south of Colebrook, where he lived alone.
Drega had a long history of conflict with town officials. In the early 1970s, the town took him to court over a zoning violation because he refused to finish a house, which was covered with tar paper, former selectman Kenneth Parkhurst said.
In 1991, neighbor Gary Phillips said, Bunnell went to Drega's house to serve him with court papers and Drega greeted her and a police officer with a gun.