Authorities investigating ‘suspicious death’ but neighbors say a man died after being stabbed

UPDATE 8 p.m.: Arrest made in Friday stabbing death at Nutts Pond

MANCHESTER, NH – A man was found dead on the trail at Nutts Pond Friday morning and while authorities described it as a “suspicious death,” a resident said he was stabbed to death.

Evelyn Diaz, 42, who lives at The Village at Beech Hill directly across from the rail trail at Nutts Pond, said when her husband, Samuel Graham, was coming home from work that morning about 10:30 a.m., he encountered an angry, glaring man.

“Like he was on meth or something,” she said.

Once he arrived home, Graham got his cigarettes and went back out to the trail, near Gold Street and which is about 200 feet from their home, to have a smoke.

That, she said, was when her husband saw a man down on the ground.  He went to him, thinking he might have just fallen on the trail and hit his head.  He asked if he was OK but got no response.

“That’s when he saw the stab wounds,” she said.  The man was stabbed in the chest but also had wounds on his hands and arms.

“So, he was trying to defend himself as this guy was stabbing him,” she said.

Graham immediately called 911.

The fire department and an AMR ambulance arrived within five minutes and then the police.

Her husband said there were two other women on the path when he saw the man on the ground.

The older woman, she said, saw the incident and the man fall to the ground.  She pointed to a man walking away with his hands in his pockets as the assailant, Graham told his wife.

The man she pointed out, Diaz said, was the same angry man her husband had encountered on his way home from work.

Diaz said police later stopped that man at the nearby Wal-Mart and took him into custody.

Police initially issued a notice saying, “There is currently a significant police presence in the area of the walking trail near Nutts Pond. While we ask that citizens stay out of the area, we want to emphasize that there is no danger to the public. “

In the afternoon, Attorney General John M. Formella and Manchester Police Chief Allen Aldenberg issued a news release saying officials had responded to the scene of a suspicious death of an adult male in Manchester. A few hours later a follow-up press release added the following:

Police were called to an area on the western edge of Nutt Pond for a report of an injured individual. Responding officers discovered a deceased male who appeared to have been stabbed.

At this point in the investigation, all parties involved appear to have been identified and there is no threat to the public stemming from this incident.

Additional information will be released as it becomes available while protecting the integrity of the investigation.

The rail trail is closed to the public as detectives continue to investigate the death.

Neighbors say the rail trail is regularly used by residents, particularly the elderly, heading to the nearby Wal-Mart or Hannaford, and children heading to and from school.

Diaz, who was acting as the spokesman for residents of the apartment complex, said there are many homeless encampments along the trail.

“They hang out there to do their meth, their heroin,” she said.

She said in the past two weeks, there has been more of a police presence in routing them out but they just keep returning.

Safety is a great concern of the residents, she said, especially where there isn’t a single street light in the complex.

“Once it gets dark, nobody passes this area,” she said. “Everybody wants this to be a nice area.  Police have been keeping people out but they’re still coming back, still doing what they’re doing.  It’s not good because there’s a lot of older people around, a lot of kids.”

Now that someone has been killed, the elderly residents really don’t want to take the trail, she said.

“They have wheelchairs.  What are they going to do?  There are no sidewalks here,” Diaz said. “So, they have to use the streets and be yelled at to get off the street.”

She said in the past two weeks, Manchester police have been coming around here even at night, putting their lights on and getting out of their cruisers and walking around.

“I say all right.  It’s making me feel a lot safer because they’re at least looking out for us because it wasn’t happening before,” she said.

Two weeks ago, she said, a man, in his 30s, was found dead, face down in the pond.

Dan Hotin, 60, has lived at the apartment complex for seven years.  He said a couple of months ago another man, who was also in his 30s and lived at the complex, committed suicide on the trail.

Both he and Hotin said the area is not a safe one. He said there has been a lot of gunfire in the area although, until Friday, no murders.

“We always suspect if they were to drain the pond they might find some bodies,” he said.

Hotin said he would like to see more police presence and more lighting “for sure.”

“It’s (the trail) is probably the number one spot for drug and heroin dealing going on,” he said.  “People stop here, go down to the trail and come back. For a while, it was all day long, people going down to the trail and then coming right back up.”

He said it has slowed down.