Concord Hospital Official Urges Passage of Gun Law After Shooting

The associate medical director of New Hampshire Hospital urged lawmakers to pass gun control legislation Friday, describing the anguish that followed the fatal shooting of a security officer in the facility’s lobby last year.

‘A coworker was murdered 100 feet from my office,’ Dr. Samanta Swetter told the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. ‘Then I had to sit there while other people I loved were in danger, and I could do very little to help them.’

The committee was holding public hearings on half a dozen bills seeking to either restrict or expand access to firearms, including one drafted in response to the death of Bradley Haas, who was killed in November by a former patient at the psychiatric hospital in Concord.