Attorney General says Charlestown officer justified in deadly-force shooting

The New Hampshire Attorney General has cleared a Charlestown police officer in the deadly-force shooting of a fleeing driver, saying the officer’s actions were justified in the Nov. 14, 2025, incident. Attorney General John M. Formella announced the ruling July 17, 2026, ending the state’s review of the officer-involved shooting in Sullivan County.

Investigators said the encounter began as a traffic stop attempt. In search-result snippets from local coverage, officials said the officer tried to stop 23-year-old Christian Paquette for speeding before the situation escalated. The case was described as a non-fatal officer-involved shooting, meaning Paquette survived the gunfire even as the Attorney General’s Office treated the case as a deadly-force review.

The New Hampshire Department of Justice had already issued an update on the Charlestown investigation and later released the name of the officer involved. Those notices signaled that the state had moved through the standard investigative steps after the shooting in Charlestown, a town where police actions can quickly become a countywide issue because the agency serves a small community with limited local layers of review.

Formella’s decision means state investigators concluded the officer met the legal test for using deadly force under New Hampshire law. In practical terms, that standard asks whether the officer reasonably believed deadly force was necessary in the face of a threat serious enough to justify it, such as death or serious bodily injury. The ruling closes the legal review, but it does not answer the broader policy questions now facing Charlestown and Sullivan County residents.

Those unanswered questions start with the rules that governed the stop itself and the use of force once Paquette fled. They also extend to whether the Charlestown Police Department will change training, pursuit rules or supervisory review after the shooting, and how local officials intend to explain the decision to residents who expect clear limits on when a traffic stop can turn into a gunfire investigation.

The case now stands as the latest test of how New Hampshire reviews officer-involved shootings: state investigators examine the facts, the attorney general makes the legal call, and local police departments are left to decide whether policy changes are needed to rebuild public trust.