Manchester man who threatened shooting at UNH indicted

Christopher S. Stewart, charged with threatening to carry out a mass shooting at the University of New Hampshire at Manchester in September, was recently indicted by the Belknap County grand jury. 

Stewart, 33, of Manchester, was indicted on a single charge of criminal threatening-violent crime.

The indictment alleges that Stewart threatened to commit a mass shooting at the urban campus of UNH Sept. 7.

According to court records, Stewart sent a text Sept. 7 to a case worker at the Lakes Region Mental Health Center in Laconia stating that the “shooting was the right thing to do even if it meant going to jail.”

The charge was brought in Belknap County because the mental health case worker reported the communication from Stewart to Laconia police.

Manchester police subsequently took Stewart into custody at his Manchester apartment. There they found an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle with two loaded magazines.

At a probable cause hearing in Belknap Superior Court on Oct. 5, Judge Elizabeth Leonard ordered that Stewart remain in preventive detention at the Belknap County Corrections facility where he has been held since Sept. 13.

An indictment is not an indication of guilt. Rather it is a determination by a grand jury that there is enough evidence of an alleged crime to warrant bringing a case to trial.

A trial in the case is tentatively scheduled for next May.