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Home » News » Crime

August 06. 2012 8:42PM

Mother of Greenland shooter fights lawsuit

BRENTWOOD —The four police officers wounded in a fierce gun battle that left Greenland Police Chief Michael Maloney dead have filed suit against the shooter’s mother, who owns the Greenland property where the shootout occurred.

In their suit, the officers — each identified only as John Doe — argue that Beverly Mutrie is liable for their injuries because she “recklessly and wantonly” allowed her son, Cullen Mutrie, to engage in criminal activity on the property at 517 Post Road.

But her lawyer, Bradley M. Lown of Portsmouth, filed a motion last week asking a Rockingham County Superior Court judge to toss the suit, arguing she can’t be liable just because she owns the property.

Lown further suggested that the officers, or their Portsmouth attorney, Christopher Grant, are motivated “only by a desire to profit off the tragedy that resulted in the death of Mrs. Mutrie’s only child,” the motion to dismiss said.

The officers were members of the Attorney General’s Drug Task Force and showed up at the residence on April 12 to serve a search warrant as part of an investigation into alleged drug dealing by Mutrie and his girlfriend, Brittany Tibbetts.

A search warrant application said police planned to look for Oxycodone Hydrochloride and cocaine in their search on the night of the shootings, but Mutrie opened fire on the drug agents and killed Maloney moments after he saved one of the wounded officers.

While the suit didn’t name the officers, authorities have identified them as Newmarket Detective Scott Kukesh, Rochester Detective Jeremiah Murphy, Dover Detective Gregory Turner, and University of New Hampshire Detective Eric Kulberg.

After the shootings, Cullen Mutrie shot and killed Tibbetts before fatally shooting himself, authorities have said.

The suit accuses Beverly Mutrie of allowing her deceased son’s “criminal activity and conduct to take place at the subject property and otherwise directly and indirectly and wantonly and recklessly supported and facilitated Cullen Mutrie’s criminal activity …” As a result of her “misconduct,” the suit said, the officers suffered severe injuries, lost wages, and “loss of enjoyment of life.”

In the motion to dismiss, Lown claims Beverly Mutrie “had no knowledge of any ‘criminal activity’ or any charges other than those that have been a matter of public record, fully recounted in the newspapers.”

He also argues that police had “ample information about Cullen Mutrie and his propensities, as evidenced by the search warrant affidavits, and assumed the risk of a confrontation. It is that confrontation on April, 12, 2012, that the plaintiffs now seek to blame on Cullen Mutrie’s mother by virtue of her ownership of the property.”

“The mere fact that a tragically violent act occurred on a piece of property owned by the defendant does not impute liability for that act upon the defendant where she did not engage in any form of intentional conduct in disregard of a known risk of such magnitude that as to make it highly probable that the harm would follow,” the motion to dismiss said.

jschreiber@newstote.com

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