A 50-year-old New Hampshire woman who once worked as a deputy sheriff and a corrections officer hit a robber with her walker when he broke into her home on Sunday, the New Hampshire Union Leader reported.

Candace Neal told the Union Leader she needs the walker to get around because she became disabled about a year ago due to back problems. About two weeks ago, she said she also had surgery for a diabetes-related infection in her right foot.

A masked intruder armed with a knife burst into Neal's home Sunday afternoon, charging at her and a friend who was visiting, she said.

"I mean, I just looked up, and here was this guy running at us," Neal told WMUR.com in New Hampshire.

"My girlfriend tried to get in the middle of him and I and he punched her and threw her away, you know? Then I fell back on the bed and held my walker up and then I started hitting him with it, particularly trying to hit the knife," she added.

The robber got away with Neal's purse, which she thought she had managed to kick under the bed and hide, the Union Leader reported. The bag contained Neal's ID, $200 in cash and a month's worth of Oxycodone, methadone, muscle relaxants and the anti-stress medication. The powerful painkillers had been prescribed to Neal following her foot surgery.

"I'm quite sure that that's what they were after, was my prescriptions," she told WMUR.

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Police are searching for the suspect, who is described as a white male in his 30s, about 6 feet tall with an athletic build. He was last seen wearing tan pants and a navy blue zip-up hoodie sweatshirt. A blue bandanna was covering his face during the break-in.

“I was almost helpless. If I didn't have the walker, I'd have nothing,” she told the Union Leader. “I was just trying to defend myself and my stuff.”

Neal, who told the Union Leader she has worked a variety of jobs, including deli worker, deputy sheriff and a corrections officer, said she would be moving out.

"This neighborhood is declining," she told WMUR.

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Updated at 6:45 p.m. ET: A missing 19-year-old University of New Hampshire student was either strangled or suffocated to death, a judge said Monday.

The New Hampshire judge's comments in Dover District Court came during Monday's arraignment of 29-year-old Seth Mazzaglia, who has been charged with second-degree murder in the slaying of college student Elizabeth "Lizzi" Marriott, the Boston Herald reported.

"You caused the death of Elizabeth Marriott," the judge said, according to the Herald. "The circumstances that manifested in an extreme indifference to human life by strangling her and/or suffocating her."

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Mazzaglia, a martial arts instructor and actor, was charged Saturday, though Marriott's body has still not been found. The two reportedly met over the summer, while working at a Target store in Greenland, N.H., the Worcester Telegram & Gazette in Worcester, Mass., reported.

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The search for Marriott’s body could “take days,” New Hampshire Senior Assistant Attorney General Jane Young said at a press conference Monday afternoon, according to the Herald. Authorities are focusing their search near Peirce Island in Portsmouth, N.H.

"The search in that area may last several more days. They have not exhausted that search," Young said, according to the AP. "We have not discussed an end date. We have discussed continuing this until we find her."

Authorities in Maine and Massachusetts also have been notified in case her body washes up there, Young said, according to the AP.

Marriott, a marine biology major, was last heard from on Tuesday. She was from Westborough, Mass. She had been living with an aunt in Chester, N.H., and commuting to the university in Durham, N.H.

Mazzaglia is being held in jail without bail and is due back in court on Oct. 29, the Herald reported. He did not enter a plea, the newspaper added.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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The search for the body of a 19-year-old University of New Hampshire student was suspended Sunday ahead of the arraignment for a martial arts instructor who's been charged in her death, a prosecutor said.

A ground and water search on and around Peirce Island in Portsmouth, N.H., was put on hold Sunday, Senior Assistant Attorney General Jane Young said, according to The Associated Press. She said officials will discuss the next "viable step" in the search on Monday, the same day 29-year-old Seth Mazzaglia of Dover is arraigned in connection with the death of Elizabeth "Lizzi" Marriott.

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Mazzaglia was charged Saturday with second-degree murder, but Marriott's body has not been located. Marriott was from Westborough, Mass., and had been living with an aunt in Chester, N.H., and commuting to the university in Durham.

Assistant District Attorney James C. Vara would not comment on how cooperative Mazzaglia had been after his arrest or how investigators were led to the Peirce Island. The island which is about 100 feet off the coast of Portsmouth and is connected by road to the mainland, the Boston Globe reported.

Mazzaglia and Marriott met last summer when both were working at a Target store in Greenland, N.H., Marriott's aunt, Rebecca Tyning, told the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. Young confirmed they knew each other, but she declined to say whether they worked together.

"There was familiarity between them," Young said.

Marriott, a marine biology major, was last heard from on Tuesday.

She attended class that night and made plans to visit friends in Dover. Her cellphone was used that night, according to fliers family members posted around town. Her car was later found in a campus parking lot in Durham.

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Friends and family have described Marriott as a fun-loving, trusting young woman with a wide circle of friends who was active in chorus and a prom queen in high school. She loved animals, volunteered at the New England Aquarium and was helping put herself through school by working at Target, friends said.

“This evil act will not define Lizzi,” the Rev. John Taylor, pastor of the First United Methodist Church in Westborough, told his congregation on Sunday, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported.

“We will remember her smiling and laughing.” 

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At a vigil in Westborough on Saturday night, her father choked back tears while speaking to the hundreds who had gathered, calling his daughter an angel and saying she's now in heaven.

Mazzaglia graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 2006 with a degree in theater. Friends have said they were shocked to hear of his arrest.

A person named Seth Mazzaglia was listed in a short newspaper article as one of 18 graduates last December from the Portsmouth Police Department's Citizens Police Academy, a program that aims to bring citizens closer to police and raise public awareness about crime prevention techniques. The academy's director, Sgt. Tom Grella, could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Mazzaglia was being held at the Strafford County House of Correction in Dover on Sunday. It was unclear whether he had an attorney, but Young said she expected him to have one appointed in time for Monday's hearing.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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Jew Pond, a small, unremarkable, yet controversial body of water in New Hampshire, has been officially renamed Carleton Pond, which many had been calling it anyway.

Residents from Mont Vernon, N.H., had pejoratively dubbed it “Jew Pond” in the 1920s after two Jewish businessmen from Boston bought a hotel there, the Los Angeles Times reported. The businessmen wanted to reopen the hotel for Jewish guests, who had been banned from the hotel – and from most hotels in New Hampshire.

(A hotel brochure, unearthed by journalist Katelyn Dobbs for a 13-minute documentary she produced, noted: “Applications from Hebrews not desired.”)

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The pond had been given other names – Spring Pond and Fire Pond among them – but “Jew Pond” made its way onto federal maps in the 1960s, the Nashua Telegraph reported.

It wasn’t until 2010, when an algae bloom prompted the state to close off the lake that Jew Pond made headlines.  

“A lot of us kind of cringed that our town would be characterized as having a pond that could be offensive to people and viewed as anti-Semitic,” Rich Masters, a Mont Vernon health officer, said in Dobbs’ documentary. Masters ultimately petitioned the town to change the pond’s name because he found it disrespectful.

“We thought it wasn’t a very good name for a pond,” Masters said. “I spoke to some people with a Jewish tradition, and they were not happy about it either.”

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Jeff Fladen, director of the New Hampshire Jewish Federation, told Dobbs that hearing the name “Jew Pond” reminded him of offensive phrases such as “Jewing down the price,” or talking about a “Jew lawyer” or a “Jew politician.”

“If the name had been Jewish pond,” Fladen said, “we would not be having this conversation.”  

Jew Pond gained national attention and even Daily Show host Jon Stewart did a bit on the pond in March, suggesting, jokingly, that it might be inhabited by a mythical and neurotic creature (Woody Allen).

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But some Mont Vernon residents didn’t find the pond’s name offensive.

“As long as there are old people here we will always call it Jew Pond,” a woman identified as Mrs. Wilkins of the Historical Society told Dobbs. “In this day and age we do not consider it an insult. It’s just history.”

That said, Wilkins noted, the name “probably was an insult.”  

After a year of debate, Mont Vernon residents overwhelmingly voted to change the pond's name to Carleton Pond after George O. Carleton who donated it to the town. The U.S. Geological Survey agreed and, on Friday, officially changed its name.

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PELHAM, N.H. -- Nine people, including two children, were injured when fireworks exploded at a home on Tuesday evening.

Neighbors say they heard an explosion and saw a fireball light the night sky.

"I just heard an explosion. It sounded like fireworks -- a big supply of them blew up," said Peter Catanzano, a neighbor.

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"It was a big, orange mushroom cloud. That's what it looked like," said Taylor Jackson, a neighbor.

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'Stretchers on the front lawn'
Medical crews rushed to the scene and helicopters took the most severely injured, including two young children, to the hospital.

"There were so many ambulances and fire trucks and cop cars everywhere, people running around,” Jackson said. “There were stretchers on the front lawn for people that got hurt."

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Neighbors say the Dodge Road fireworks display is an annual tradition, but for some the fireworks, usually kept under the deck, ignited.

"Somehow this whole bunch of fireworks exploded and the porch is gone, and a portion of the side of the house," said Barbara Catanzano, a neighbor.

Among those rushed to the hospital was one of the homeowner’s adult children, a firefighter.

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Updated at 5:41 a.m. ET: GREENLAND, N.H. -- The body of a man suspected of killing a New Hampshire police chief and wounding four other officers during a drug raid has been found in a house along with that of an unidentified woman, an official said Friday.

Attorney General Michael Delaney told reporters a police robot was sent inside the house at around 2 a.m. Friday following a standoff. It detected the bodies of suspect Cullen Mutrie and the woman, said by NBC News sources to be Mutrie's girlfriend. Delaney said both died of gunshot wounds.

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Greenland Police Chief Michael Maloney, who was due to retire in less than two weeks, was killed Thursday evening when he and other officers entered the house during a drug raid.

Two officers from other communities were shot in the chest and were in intensive care early Friday. Two others were treated and released.

'Sacrificed his life'
The shooting has devastated the town of 3,500 near the seacoast that had just seven police officers, including Maloney, 48.

"In those final days, he sacrificed his life in public service as a law enforcement officer in New Hampshire," Delaney said early Friday.

Maloney had 26 years of experience in law enforcement, the last 12 as chief of the Greenland department.

During the standoff, officials brought in an armored car "like a tank" with a battering ram, according to an NBC News correspondent at the location.

Police patrolled the area armed with machine guns. Air space was shut down and homes in the area were evacuated. Before the end of the standoff, it was said that the town's schools would be closed Friday, because law enforcement officers were using the elementary school as a staging area.

Delaney earlier told a news conference that "law enforcement officers responded to 517 Post Road and ... were conducting a drug investigation. They entered the home at that time and they encountered an armed subject."

"The armed subject shot rounds at the officers...," he continued. "The officers that were wounded are receiving treatment for their gunshot wounds at a local hospital."

More police officers being killed despite drop in violent crime

Detective Scott Kukesh, 33, a 10-year veteran of the Newmarket police department, was in intensive care awaiting surgery for a gunshot wound to the chest; and Detective Jeremiah Murphy, 34, a seven-year veteran of the Rochester police department, was in intensive care after surgery for a gunshot wound to the chest.

Detective Gregory Turner, 32, a six-year veteran of the Dover police department, was treated for a gunshot wound to the shoulder and released; Detective Eric Kulberg, 31, a seven-year veteran of the University of New Hampshire police department, was treated for a gunshot wound to the arm and released. 

2 Coast Guard members shot to death in Alaska

Neighbors told the station that police had been called to the house before.

"It's been known for sometime that something's been going on at that house. It's just a matter of time. When you see lights on at 4 o'clock in the morning and you see vehicles coming in and out and you have cameras mounted on their porch looking out to see people coming in...," one neighbor told NBC Boston.

Law enforcement agencies from surrounding towns such as Rye, Portsmouth, and Exeter, New Hampshire, went to Greenland to help during the standoff.

"We're in crisis mode," said Karen Anderson, town administer, as the siege continued.

Surprise party for chief's retirement
John Penacho, chairman of the town's Board of Selectman, said Maloney was married with children.

"It's a blow to all of us. You're stunned. It's New Hampshire, it's a small town," he said. "We're stunned. I mean all of us. It's an unbelievable situation."

Jacqueline DeFreze, who lives a half-mile down the road from the house where the shooting happened, said she was devastated by reports that the chief had been shot.

She had planned to attend a surprise party for his retirement.

"I'm a wreck. He was just the greatest guy," said DeFreze, a fourth-grade teacher in nearby Rye. "He's kind-hearted, always visible in the community."

Gov. John Lynch was at Portsmouth Regional Hospital, where the officers were taken. He asked residents to pray for the injured officers and Maloney's family.

"My thoughts and prayers and those of my wife, Susan, are with the family of Chief Michael Maloney. Chief Maloney's unwavering courage and commitment to protecting others serves as an example to us all," he said.

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The city of Keene, N.H., population 23,000, nestled in a valley in the state's southwest corner, may not be the first place that comes to mind as a terrorism target, but this summer it will take delivery on a $286,000 armored vehicle, compliments of the Department of Homeland Security.

The Lenco "BearCat," fitted with thermal imaging, radiation and explosive gas detection systems, gun mounts and rotating hatch is but one example of the kind of quasi-military equipment that has been acquired by local and state law enforcement agencies through billions of dollars worth of federal grant money in the last decade.

"The specialized-mission CBRNE/WMD rescue vehicle will help to guard against a terrorist or (chemical, biological, nuclear, and enhanced conventional weapons/weapons of mass destruction) incident," said the successful federal grant application filed by the city.

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The application noted that Keene hosts several events that draw large crowds each year -- such as the annual Pumpkin Festival and Clarence DeMar Marathon -- lies on major corridor used by trucks carrying hazardous materials and is a designated evacuation area if there is a nuclear accident at Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in Vernon, Vt.  It also pointed out that the city is situated on two flood prone rivers, and Bearcats have proven useful for rescues and patrols during natural disasters.

The Keene City Council voted on Dec. 15 to accept the Homeland Security grant for the equipment as requested by the police. Approval was unsurprising, said City Manager John MacLean.

"The council saw it like I did," said MacLean, "as a legitimate request ... to make safe our department and our community by the use of a too. … It didn’t occur to everybody how big an issue it would be for other reasons."

MacLean was referring to swift and furious opposition that surfaced soon after the vote, from the liberal wing of the college town, from Libertarian and Tea Party members and from activists from as far away as New Mexico, according to local politicians.  

"Almost the next day, the calls started to come into the radio station, the newspaper was inundated with letters to the editor for the next several weeks, extraordinary because the deal was supposed to be done," said Terry Clark, a councilman who had voted against using the grant. "There was so much about this issue not to like."

Clark opposed the use of the grant because he thought it wrong to for the U.S. government to lavish money on military grade equipment at the same time it is making deep cuts in funding for education and other mandated programs — costs that he says are now falling on local property taxpayers.

"I thought it was just unconscionable," he said. "The city of Keene doesn’t have to enable these people. We can tell them 'no, we don’t think this is a good way to spend money."

Clark lobbied for the City Council to hold public discussion and then take a new vote.  It did so this month, then again voted to approve the Bearcat purchase, though by fewer votes this time.

Across the country — in major cities, but also in relatively rural settings — police have added armored vehicles, hazmat protection, body armor, riot gear, drones and other military grade gear to their toolboxes in the decade since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

According to a recent report by the Center for Investigative Reporting, the federal government has doled out some $34 billion in grants like the one approved for the Keene police force.

When some of that gear was visibly employed for crowd control during the recent Occupy protests, it fueled controversy about how the equipment was to be used.

But some law enforcers say the equipment provides a sense of security.

In Bossier Parish, La., the sheriff’s department acquired a Ballistic Armored Tactical Transport -- a heavily armored vehicle that has gun ports and a turret -- in 2009 with federal grant money. The vehicle was a tool for the SWAT team to use in the event of a high-threat situation, according to public information officer Bill Davis.

"If you’ve got an active shooter and he has some heavy weaponry we need to be one step ahead," said Davis.

The BATT has been used only for training so far, he said, comparing it tp the handguns officers carry.

"People want to know if the cavalry needs to be called out, we’re coming. ... We are no longer Mayberry," he added, referring to the northwest Louisiana parish. "This is the fastest growing parish in Louisiana and with that growth is the potential of more crime in the area, and we want to be prepared."

In Keene, MacLean, the city manager, said the debate over the BearCat purchase opened some eyes on both sides of the debate.

"I think we have two sets of conversations going, both of which are legitimate," he said. "The (police) chief said it could save lives… If this has potential to save lives, and the lives of the people they work with, why wouldn’t they (acquire it)? But it’s been brought into a separate conversation about militarization of the police."

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