WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — With one weapons charge adjudicated and another to come in Vermont, a 51-year-old Bethel man now faces a felony drug-possession charge in New Hampshire.
In advance of his Monday afternoon arraignment in Grafton County Superior Court in North Haverhill, Richard A. Boles is spending this weekend at the adjoining county house of corrections.
The self-employed roofer agreed to extradition to New Hampshire from Vermont on Friday, after pleading guilty in Windsor Superior Court to a misdemeanor charge of reckless endangerment in connection with a December 2018 shooting incident at his Bethel home.
New Hampshire State Police had been looking for Boles, who has six prior felony convictions, during the four months he was at Vermont’s Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield, Vt., awaiting a Windsor County court appearance on the 2018 weapons charge and on another, in Orange County, stemming from a confrontation with his girlfriend and her brother in Tunbridge over Labor Day weekend 2019.
Vermont State Police Detective Sgt. Jesse Robson said in an affidavit filed this week that he learned on New Year’s Day of a warrant for Boles, which Grafton County Superior Court Judge Peter Bornstein issued on Nov. 12. Boles, then in the Vermont prison, had failed to appear in court that day on a Class A felony charge of possession of methamphetamine, which police said they found on him on May 3 in Enfield.
The Grafton County grand-jury indictment of Boles, on Oct. 11, noted that he had a 2011 conviction for possession of 2.5 grams or more of cocaine.
As part of a plea agreement with the Windsor County State’s Attorney’s Office, Boles on Friday waived his right to contest the extradition and pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge of firing a weapon at Daniel Chandronnet in late 2018.
Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Mann in turn sentenced him to time served and to a year’s probation, provided he live up to a long list of conditions — among them staying away from Chandronnet and abstaining from alcohol — and dismissed a felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
During Friday’s hearing, Boles continued to dispute the claim that he targeted Chandronnet, pointing the index finger of his left hand toward the ceiling and asserting, “It was not fired at him; it was in the air.”
Boles decided to go for the plea agreement “even though we really wanted to go to trial,” Boles’ public defender, Jordana Levine, said after the Windsor County hearing. She added that she and her client are still awaiting his next Orange Superior Court hearing on charges ranging from aggravated domestic assault on his girlfriend, India Tweedie, including firing several shots while chasing Tweedie around the yard of her brother’s house in Tunbridge.
Boles’ arraignment on the New Hampshire charge is scheduled for Monday afternoon at 3.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com or 603-727-3304.