Carl Drega
American mass murderer
Carl Drega (January 19, 1935 – August 19, 1997) was an American spree killer who fatally shot four people on August 19, 1997, in what is known as the Colebrook shootings.
Drega had several long-term disputes with town and state government officials over his property in Columbia since the early 1980s. Drega shot and killed two New Hampshire state troopers, a judge and a newspaper editor in Colebrook. He also wounded four law enforcement officers before being shot and killed in a gunfight with police in Bloomfield, Vermont. It remains the deadliest mass shooting in New Hampshire's history.
Background
Carl Drega was born on January 19, 1935, in New Haven, Connecticut, to Polish immigrants. He claimed to have served in the U.S. military during the Korean War. Drega later worked in construction and lived in Manchester, New Hampshire, later moving into a home in Bow, New Hampshire, he built for himself and his wife Rita from 1969 to 1970. However, Rita was diagnosed with cancer the following year and died in 1972.
Drega had a long history of conflict with government officials over code enforcement issues, starting in the 1970s over whether he could use tar paper to side his vacation house in Columbia, New Hampshire, on the banks of the Connecticut River.
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This entry incorporates text from “Carl Drega” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.