MANCHESTER, NH — Sheila Lemos was soundly sleeping when her dog Brady started barking and woke her about 3 a.m.
“Help! I’ve been stabbed. I’ve been stabbed,” Lemos, a retired Manchester elementary school teacher, recalled hearing a man yelling, “Hurry up! Hurry up! Help me.”
She couldn’t make out what the other man was saying but he appeared to be on a cell phone and she presumed he was calling 911.
Within minutes, Lemos said Sagamore Street, between Oak and Russell streets, was filled with police cruisers and two ambulances.
She has been unable to sleep since that abrupt awakening. Twelve hours after the incident, the body of the man who was shot remains under a tarp in a driveway directly under her bedroom window.
Photo/Pat Grossmith
Lemos doesn’t know who was shot but she said one of the individuals involved lives on the first floor of 219 Sagamore St. She said from her back porch she could see police officers going in and out of that apartment all day.
Police said they were called about 3 a.m. to 219 Sagamore for a reported shooting and found one man shot and another man stabbed. Investigators have not released the names of either man.
An autopsy by the New Hampshire Chief Medical Examiner’s Office is scheduled for Friday.
Police say about 3 a.m. March 14, officers went to 219 Sagamore St. for a reported shooting and found a man with an apparent gunshot wound. He died from his injuries, according to the N.H. Attorney General’s Office, which is overseeing the investigation being conduct by Manchester police.
The other man suffered a stab wound police described as not life-threatening.
Police say they identified all parties involved in the incident and there is nothing to suggest there is a threat to the general public.
Ward 2 Alderman Will Stewart acknowledged the news with a Facebook post Thursday morning, saying he was “shocked and saddened to hear of the violent loss of life” in the neighborhood.
Mid-afternoon, a section of Sagamore Street still was cordoned off with police tape and the police department’s Critical Incident Response Unit truck was on the scene.
Lemos’ said nothing like this has ever occurred in the neighborhood. Her parents bought the 215 Sagamore St. building in 1955. A close-knit neighborhood, she said there are only 11 houses on the street between Oak and Russell streets. Six of the houses are occupied by second and third generations of the same families.
“This is a wonderful neighborhood,” she said. “That’s why it’s so hard to believe.”
One woman walking her dog, who declined to give her name, agreed the neighborhood is generally quiet except for frequent car accidents at the Maple and Sagamore streets intersection but “nothing like this.” She said she would pray for all involved.
Ken Fox of Harrison Street, out for a morning run, said when he saw the police tape he feared it could be a homicide but “hoped it was something else.” He, too, said the neighborhood was a quiet one.
Gene Brown, who lives further east on Sagamore Street, offered to let police view video taken on his surveillance system of a car about 12:30 a.m. driving slowly down the street, which he thought was unusual. He said he doesn’t know if it had anything to do with the incident but hoped it could be helpful.
The three-family apartment building where the shooting occurred is owned by David Conaway, according to the city’s Online Assessment Database.
Additional information will be released as it becomes available, investigators said.
Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact Detective Sergeant Christopher Biron at the Manchester Police Department at (603) 792-5545, or make an anonymous tip on Manchester Crimeline.