Six state troopers were legally justified in firing 40 shots at a Claremont man, hitting him nine times, because they were “concerned about their safety” and the safety of residents in the surrounding neighborhood, according to a report from the Office of the Attorney General.

Jeffrey Ely, 40, was shot and killed this March during an hours-long standoff with members of the N.H. State Police SWAT team.

Hours before the shooting, Claremont Police Department responded to a mental health call during which Ely said he was hearing voices from inanimate objects and that the voices were harassing and monitoring him. Friends and acquaintances later said they were concerned about his mental health and drug use leading up to the March shooting.

The day of the shooting, Ely declined to speak to a mental health provider or go in for an evaluation. Officers planned to start filing the paperwork necessary to involuntarily admit him to the hospital for psychiatric treatment.

However, before this plan could take form, Claremont and Newport police received a call that Ely shot at a small group of people near a garage he was renting and living in.

When officers arrived, Ely shot one of his many loaded guns from inside the garage, promoting the Claremont police chief to call in backup from the state police.

Ely, who had a criminal record but was not a convicted felon, did not respond to calls from the crisis negotiation unit to deescalate the situation via phone call and loudspeaker, according to the report.

“Officers believed he had difficulty distinguishing between their voices and voices in his head,” New Hampshire Assistant Attorney General Scott Chase said Wednesday.

State Troopers used an armored vehicle to break down the door in the garage, at which point Ely began firing at the vehicle with an AR-style rifle.

Six troopers — Gary Ingham, William Neilsen, Stefan Czyzowski, Nicholas Cyr, Shane Larkin, and Noah Sanctuary — shot a total of about 37 rounds at Ely after he did not heed directions to drop his gun and instead walked towards the door.

Sixteen seconds later, Larkin fired another three rounds at Ely after he fell to the ground because he said he saw him turning and raising his gun.

“I did not want him to then just randomly as a last-ditch effort take… his rifle and just start firing at us indiscriminately,” Larkin said to investigators.

Two of the troopers, Czyzowski and Cyr, had previously been involved in previous non-fatal officer shootings in 2019 and 2008 respectively.

Ely’s death was ruled a homicide by Dr. Mitchell Weinberg, the Deputy Chief Medical Examiner. The autopsy also revealed that Ely’s body had amounts of methamphetamine, amphetamine, norbuprenorphine, and buprenorphine, a drug sometimes used to treat opioid use disorders.

Chase said it was reasonable for the SWAT team members to believe they faced an imminent threat of deadly force from Ely, meeting the legal justification of using deadly force.

They also concluded that Larkin’s second round of shots was legally justified.

(Material from the Vally News was used in this report.)

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