84-page final report on 2019 Quality Inn standoff that left 3 dead concludes no charges against law enforcement

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Diagram C: Photograph of Mr. St. Cyr, right, looking out of the Window at Mr. Marshall

MANCHESTER, NH — More than a year after a deadly shootout at the Quality Inn on South Wilow Street the NH Attorney General has released an 84-page final report detailing the events leading up to and including an officer-involved shooting and resulted in the deaths of Stephen Marshall, 51, Christian St. Cyr, 26, and Brandie (Tarantino) St. Cyr, 21.

The deaths were part of a police-involved incident that began with arrest warrants for drug activity that occurred on March 27-28, 2019, at the Quality Inn.

The full report is published at the bottom of this post.

Below are relevant excerpts describing what happened according to the report, and what led to the death of Christian St. Cyr, Brandie St. Cyr and Stephen Marshall.

In the final conclusion, the AG has determined that based on details of the investigation, members of Manchester and Nashua Police Department “were legally justified in using less-lethal munitions against Mr. St. Cyr and Mrs. St. Cyr, when that force constituted either non-deadly or deadly force,” meaning no criminal charges will be filed against any members of the Manchester or Nashua Police Departments or drug agents related to their deaths.


In summary of events leading to the cause of death for all three wanted subjects, the AG’s office begins by describing why Christian and Brandie St. Cyr and Stephen Marshall were “persons of interest” to investigators from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) New Hampshire field office. They were wanted for trafficking in fentanyl between Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Excerpts from the report:

Manchester Police Detective Cliff Ellston was assigned to the DEA’s Task Force and working with DEA Special Agents Jean Drouin and Galen Doud. Due to his interstate drug trafficking and recent threats to shoot police officers if stopped, the Task Force had been interested in Christian. Cyr in the weeks leading up to the stand-off.

In response to the then-anonymous caller’s tip to the Manchester Police Department, all three Task Force members responded to the hotel on
the afternoon of March 27 in an attempt to locate Christian St. Cyr.

According to the narrative from the report, at around 5 p.m., officers determined that Christian St. Cyr and Stephen Marshall had checked into Room 100, which is located on the ground floor at the northwest corner of the building.

The Task Force officers were on the grounds of the hotel when Christian St. Cyr and Stephen Marshall returned to the property driving a stolen BMW SUV. At 5:15 p.m., Christian and Brandie St. Cyr were seen smoking a cigarette outside the hotel, and then returned to the room together. Once the officers knew Christian St. Cyr was present at the hotel, Detective Ellston radioed Manchester Police dispatch to send additional officers to arrest the three individuals as each had outstanding warrants.

Arriving Manchester Police officers inconspicuously evacuated other hotel guests from the area surrounding Room 100 for their safety and the safety of the public, while other uniformed officers positioned themselves down the hallway outside the room. Detective Ellston, Special Agent Drouin, and Special Agent Doud were asked to stay outside the northwest corner of the building until additional uniformed officers could arrive to secure that area. Doud took a position slightly more north than the other two officers so he could better see the window to Room 100. Crisis
negotiators were called to the scene to try talking the occupants of the room into surrendering peacefully.

At approximately 7:18 p.m., crisis negotiators called the landline telephone in Room 100. Stephen Marshall answered the phone. He stated that he was aware law enforcement was outside the room. Negotiators noted that he sounded agitated. Marshall said he did not have any firearms, was alone in the room, and would come out in 10 minutes. The conversation continued for approximately five minutes until Marshall hung up on the negotiators.

A few moments after hanging up the phone, Marshall was seen at the window of Room 100 by members of the Task Force. The window was opened, and then a gunshot was heard along with the sound of breaking glass. Members of the Task Force took cover and monitored the open window. Approximately one minute later, the officers saw and heard more glass breaking as the remaining portion of the window was smashed out. Marshall then jumped from the window to the ground. Officers could see he was holding a semiautomatic handgun in his right hand.

Detective Ellston and Special Agent Doud began yelling to Marshall: “Police! Don’t move!” Marshall did not run, but scanned across his field of vision and then turned his head toward the officers to look at them. Instead of complying with the officers’ commands, Marshall
turned the rest of his body toward the officers while bringing his right arm out so that the barrel of his gun was pointing out as he turned. At this point, Detective Ellston, Special Agents Drouin and Doud believed Marshall was placing their lives and the lives of people around them in
imminent threat of deadly force. As Marshall swung his right arm up with the gun to face the officers, both Detective Ellston and Special Agent Drouin fired their department-issued firearms at Marshall. Special Agent Doud did not fire given his position. Marshall fell sideways to the ground.

After this, no other shots were fired at Marshall.

Later investigation revealed that Detective Ellston had fired six shots from his department-issued handgun. Simultaneously, Special Agent Drouin had fired seven shots from his DEA-issued rifle. In total, Marshall was struck by seven bullets. Five bullets struck his right arm,  flank, hip, thigh, and leg, respectively, one bullet struck his left chest, and one bullet struck his left forearm. He was also grazed by three additional bullets on his right knee, right trapezius muscle, and upper left arm.

Associate Medical Examiner Dr. Christine James conducted an autopsy on Mr. Marshall’s body on March 28, 2019. Dr. James determined that Mr. Marshall’s cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds to the trunk and extremities. The manner of death was ruled a homicide, which is defined as the killing of one person by another. A blood sample taken at autopsy showed the presence of high levels of several controlled drugs in Mr. Marshall’s system at the time of the incident, including: fentanyl, acetyl fentanyl, methamphetamine, and cocaine.

Based on all the facts and circumstances known to Detective Ellston and Special Agent Drouin at the time they encountered Mr. Marshall, it was reasonable for both Detective Ellston and Special Agent Drouin to conclude that Mr. Marshall was about to use deadly force against either them or private citizens in the immediate vicinity of the hotel and the commercial area surrounding them. Accordingly, Detective Ellston and Special Agent Drouin were both legally justified in using deadly force against Mr. Marshall. Therefore, no criminal charges will be filed against Detective Ellston or S/A Drouin related to the incident that resulted in the death of Mr. Marshall.


Above: Slideshow of images of text messages between Kerie St. Jean and the Christian and Brandie St. Cyr. St. Jean’s interview is included in the report along with the images used as evidence in the investigation.

More from the report:

For more than 13 hours, Mr. and Mrs. St. Cyr engaged in an armed standoff with police as officers attempted to negotiate a peaceful surrender. The occupants fired at police over the first eight hours of this standoff. Some of those gunshots were aimed in the direction of officers outside the window, while others were aimed in the direction of the officers in the hotel hallway or just outside the north end of the building. While an accurate account of every shot fired by the occupants is impossible due to the state of the scene when the standoff ended, at
least 32 shots were fired from inside the room. At one point during the night, an occupant’s gunshot pierced a water supply pipe that then sprayed water into the bathroom room area of Room 100. This continued for eight hours as the shut-off valve was inaccessible while the occupants were firing.

Once the occupants began shooting, the remaining private citizens inside the hotel were evacuated. Manchester police officers, and later Nashua police officers, tried a variety of communication methods and less-lethal munitions to persuade the occupants to surrender. This included phone calls, public address announcements, verbal commands, text messages, chemical munitions, bean bag rounds, and noise-flash devices. At one point, officers used a fire hose to take down a section of drywall while the occupants tried to hide from view while shooting at police officers. When officers did this, Mr. St. Cyr turned and started shooting at the Manchester police officers handling the hose. Manchester Police Officer Thomas Florenzo returned fire, discharging two shots from his department-issued rifle at Mr. St. Cyr. Officer Florenzo’s two rounds did not hit anyone and embedded themselves into the wall of a room across the hallway.

The standoff ended at approximately 10:12 a.m. on March 28, 2019, when police officers were able to safely enter the room. Mr. St. Cyr was removed from the room and was pronounced deceased at a nearby ambulance. Mrs. St. Cyr was found deceased inside the hotel room. Neither suffered any gunshot wounds.

The causes of death for Mr. and Mrs. St. Cyr were the combined effects of environmental hypothermia, and acute intoxication by fentanyl, acetyl fentanyl, methamphetamine, and cocaine.

Dr. Duval also determined that blunt penetrating injuries also contributed to Mr. St. Cyr’s cause of death. The manner of death for both individuals was ruled as undetermined as it was not possible to assign a single manner of death as the causes resulted from a combination of
incidental, self-imposed, an inflicted conditions.

Testing revealed the presence of especially high levels of several controlled drugs in the blood of both St. Cyrs at the time of the incident, including: fentanyl, acetyl fentanyl, methamphetamine, and cocaine Their methamphetamine levels were both in excess 600 ng/mL, a level capable of causing exhibitions of violent and irrational behavior. Their fentanyl levels alone were well within the range of fatal concentrations at (53ng/mL and 76ng/mL, respectively).

Regardless of the further complication from fentanyl’s interaction with the other controlled substances in their bloodstream, these fentanyl levels alone could have been sufficient to cause Mr. St. Cyr and Mrs. St. Cyr’s death.

The environmental hypothermia endured by the St. Cyrs was mostly of their own accord. The environmental change in the room began when the window was smashed out by Mr. Marshall at 7:29 p.m. on March 27, 2019. The introduction of water to the room then began at 2:47 a.m. after the occupants shot through the water supply pipe in the bathroom wall. Officers in the hallway saw this water, and misinterpreted the source as the sprinkler system within the room. It is common knowledge that exposure to or immersion in water accelerates the loss of body heat. The perforated supply pipe continuously pumped water into the wall and the bathroom for the next eight to nine hours, accelerating body heat loss by both occupants.

The heat loss caused by the introduction of water increased once the fire hose was used to remove the drywall separating the bedroom from the bathroom. This then began a cycle of Mr. St. Cyr attempting to barricade the newly opened wall with various objects, and the use of the hose or other less-lethal munitions to remove them again. This had no effect on Mr. St. Cyr and contributed to cooling the environment. For example, at approximately 6:30 a.m., Mr. St. Cyr was holding up a door as a barricade. Several less-lethal ferret rounds were fired with chemical munitions at the door. Mr. St. Cyr continued to hold the door. Officers radioed how he then taunted the officers “asking for more”, and how the ferret rounds seemed to have no effect.

Officers then used the hose again to dislodge the barricade from him. The use of ferret rounds to introduce chemical agents into the room did not initially constitute a use of deadly force as used by the officers during in this standoff. When first deployed, these ferret rounds were fired at high angle to minimize the risk of striking anyone and to increase their distribution of chemical agents inside the room. However, the later use of ferret rounds fired at Mr. St. Cyr’s arms and legs while he was holding doors and drywall to barricade himself did constitute deadly force, despite the fact that the munitions were less-lethal and the placement of those rounds were not made with the purpose of causing death or serious bodily injury.

When officers fired these later ferret rounds, they then had the objectively reasonable belief that Mr. St. Cyr was continuing to place the lives of the officers in jeopardy through the use of deadly force as evinced by the additional live rounds loaded in the occupants’ firearms. In addition, officers also had the objectively reasonable belief that the use of less-lethal ferret rounds at that time was necessary to effect the arrest warrants for Mr. St. Cyr and Mrs. St. Cyr, whom they reasonably believed were committing felonies involving the use of force or violence.

A link to the report and supporting materials are here. You can read the full report below:


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About this Author

Carol Robidoux

PublisherManchester Ink Link

Longtime NH journalist and publisher of ManchesterInkLink.com. Loves R&B, German beer, and the Queen City!