NORTH HAVERHILL — A Grafton Superior Court judge on Friday issued an order allowing a Lebanon man accused in a 2018 drive-by shooting in downtown Hanover to be released on bail.
The decision grants the release of Gage Young, 23, on a $100,000 bail, and requires him to stay with his family in West Lebanon. He also must remain in New Hampshire, abide by a 7 p.m.-to-8 a.m. curfew, and have no contact with the shooting victim or his family, who are from Massachusetts. Superior Court Judge Lawrence MacLeod issued the order following a closed-door bail hearing Thursday.
“The state’s evidence in favor of preventative detention … must be weighed and balanced against the defendant’s constitutional rights,” the judge wrote in the order.
Young has requested — and been denied — bail twice since his arrest more than 14 months ago. He has been held at the Grafton County House of Corrections since Nov. 3, 2018 — 439 days. He was still in detention as of Friday afternoon.
Young is accused of firing a single shot from a passing car on School Street, a block from the Dartmouth Green, hitting and injuring Providence College student Thomas Elliott, who was visiting a friend at Dartmouth.
Young was arrested alongside the driver of the car, 17-year-old Hector Correa, a short time later near Young’s house in West Lebanon. Elliott has since recovered from his injuries.
Correa was originally scheduled to testify in the case, but his name was removed from prosecutors’ most recent witness list.
In explaining his reason for the order, MacLeod wrote that prosecutors have enough evidence to take Young to trial, but that several witnesses whose “anticipated testimony the court weighed when considering bail previously” are no longer available. The judge also cited “significant delays” in bringing the case to trial, according to the order.
“Unfortunately, further delay of an uncertain duration, which is also attributable to the State, is now inevitable due to recent, unforeseen evidentiary issues,” MacLeod wrote.
Though he did not go into detail about what those issues are, he wrote that they require more litigation before going to trial.
MacLeod said that restrictive bail conditions, rather than keeping Young incarcerated, are enough to ensure public safety.
“The judge has the discretion to modify bail as he sees fit,” said Grafton County Attorney Marcie Hornick, who declined to comment further on the order.
Young’s attorney Richard Guerriero also declined to comment on the decision.
The order follows several sealed filings and closed-door hearings in the case over the past two weeks. On Jan. 9, just days before Young was scheduled to stand trial on charges of first-degree assault and falsifying evidence, prosecutors filed a sealed motion for a protective order, which was granted by the judge.
On Monday, the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office, which previously had not been involved in the case, filed a 114-page “ex parte submission of investigative materials” for the judge to privately review in accordance with the protective order. An ex parte submission is a document that’s filed in a case without an opposing party’s knowledge.
The Attorney General’s Office has declined to comment on its involvement in the case.
On Tuesday, the day opening statements in the trial were scheduled to begin, MacLeod instead held a closed-door hearing with Guerriero and Assistant Grafton County Attorney Mariana Pastore, and decided to push the trial back to sometime after March.
On Thursday, Pastore filed two motions requesting that surveillance footage from a Sunoco gas station and a liquor store in Lebanon be admitted as evidence in the case. She wrote that Young could be seen visiting those two stores the day of the shooting.
Young also faces a felony count out of Cheshire County for allegedly robbing a store at gunpoint in April 2018, according to an indictment signed by an assistant Cheshire County attorney.
The trial for that case was originally expected to start this month, but prosecutors decided to push it back until after the Grafton County case goes to trial, according to court documents.
In a motion filed Friday, Guerriero requested that a Cheshire County judge order Young’s release on bail under the same conditions as the Grafton County order.
He cited MacLeod’s decision and wrote that Assistant Cheshire County Attorney Kerry O’Neill agrees with the conditions of release.
A judge had not ruled on the motion as of Friday afternoon.
Anna Merriman can be reached at amerriman@vnews.com.