NORTH HAVERHILL — A 20-year-old former Lebanon resident has agreed to waive a deadline on an interstate detainer, meaning his trial date for allegedly participating in a drive-by Hanover shooting will be pushed back as he remains in the Grafton County jail.
At a hearing in Grafton Superior Court Tuesday morning, Bruce Jasper, the attorney for Hector Correa, said his client agreed to extend the six-month deadline for the interstate agreement on detainer beyond early November. But Correa continues to oppose a motion from prosecutors to consolidate his case with that of Lebanon resident Gage Young, who is also charged in the 2018 drive-by shooting.
Both Correa and Young, 25, have pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree assault with a firearm, second-degree assault with a firearm and reckless conduct with a deadly weapon in the Nov. 2, 2018, shooting of Thomas Elliott, a Providence College student who was walking with friends on School Street while visiting a friend at Dartmouth College. Elliott was struck in the back but recovered.
Correa was 17 at the time of the Hanover shooting and lived in Lebanon then but is being tried as an adult. He is currently serving a six-year sentence out of Connecticut after being convicted of two felonies — attempt to commit assault in the first degree via discharge of a firearm and conspiracy to commit assault in the first degree via discharge of a firearm — in a separate 2019 incident in Bridgeport, Conn. He was brought up to New Hampshire earlier this year.
In a phone interview after Tuesday’s court hearing, Jasper, who is based in Newport, said several motions have yet to be ruled on, and Judge Lawrence MacLeod Jr. has also yet to rule on whether the cases will be consolidated. Jasper said there are 5,000 pages of testimony from witnesses to go through, making the initial proposed November trial date difficult to meet.
An exact date for Correa’s trial has yet to be set; Young’s trial is currently slotted for early next year.