CONCORD — Multiple New Hampshire corrections officers have been placed on leave as authorities investigate the death of a patient at the state’s secure psychiatric facility.
Jason Rothe, 50, who has ties to Hanover, died Saturday after a physical altercation with several corrections officers, the Attorney General’s Office said Monday. An autopsy was inconclusive. Prison officials said they are cooperating with the investigation.
“The Department of Corrections strives to provide adequate and appropriate care to all residents regardless of their history,” the department said in a statement. “Any death of a resident under the care and custody of the Department is a tragedy and the Department extends its sympathy to the family of Mr. Rothe.”
Reached by phone on Monday, Priscilla Rothe, of Hanover, said her stepson, Jason Rothe, was being held at the Secure Psychiatric Unit in Concord, but she had not been informed of his death. His father, Paul Rothe, died in February, she said.
“I’m surprised I wasn’t notified,” she said of Jason Rothe’s death.
Priscilla Rothe, who said she had never met Jason Rothe in person, but had spoken to him once by phone, declined to detail why he was being held at the secure facility. She described him as a “ward of the state.”
Paul Rothe was a former president of the Hanover-based engineering consulting firm Creare. The couple were married for 12 years, she said, adding that it was sometime during their marriage that Jason Rothe moved from where he was living in Maine to the state psychiatric facility.
Michael Garrity, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, declined to provide information about how long Jason Rothe had been held at the psychiatric facility and why he was being held there.
Priscilla Rothe said she had been in touch with Jason Rothe’s social worker recently in hopes of notifying him about his father’s probate proceedings, but she said the social worker had told her he was “too sick to be able to understand the message.”
The secure psychiatric unit at the state prison treats inmates in need of acute psychiatric care, those found not guilty by reason of insanity and those who haven’t committed crimes but are deemed too dangerous to remain at the state psychiatric hospital.
The latter category has long sparked protest by those who argue that civilly committed patients shouldn’t be housed with criminals. The state has faced multiple lawsuits, and lawmakers in recent years have allocated money to build a stand-alone forensic psychiatric hospital on the grounds of the state hospital to move such patients out of the prison.
A 2017 story by WGME in Maine reported that a 44-year-old Jason Rothe had barricaded himself inside an estranged girlfriend’s home in Hancock, Maine. At the time, he was out on bail following an earlier incident in which he had been arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct and terrorizing after allegedly threatening to kill a Hancock County sheriff’s deputy.
A 1996 engagement announcement for a Jason O. Rothe published in the Valley News says he attended Hanover High.
Valley News Staff Writer Nora Doyle-Burr contributed to this report. She can be reached at 603-727-3213 or ndoyleburr@vnews.com.