LEBANON — A judge granted six orders of protection filed by the Hanover town officials against a resident who has had a contentious relationship with the town over the years.
For the next year, David Vincelette, 69, is prohibited from coming within 300 feet of Hanover Town Manager Robert Houseman, Selectboard Chairman Carey Callaghan and Selectboard members Joanna Whitcomb, Jennie Chamberlain, Athos Rassias and Jarett Berke.
“While the court finds David’s right to seek redress at public meetings is constitutionally protected, the Court also finds the manner in which he chooses to do so is decidedly not,” Lebanon Circuit Court Judge Michael Mace wrote in the May 15 order.
Vincelette is still permitted to “enjoy the right to participate in local government as a town resident,” he added. “However, the court finds his conduct so egregious that the court specifically orders that David cannot appear in-person at the town offices while the orders remain in effect.”
Mace wrote that it was up to the town to “find a way to allow (Vincelette) to view town meetings virtually by public notice.”
Additionally, Mace ordered Vincelette to “relinquish … all firearms and ammunition.”
In an email to the Valley News this week, Houseman said, “the town appreciates the judge’s thoughtful consideration of the facts presented.”
He added that “the court order speaks for itself and I have no further comment.”
While the six orders are in effect for the next year, Vincelette said he plans to attend public meetings over Zoom.
He is permitted to participate in town affairs by writing “to the selectboard as a whole or the town as an entity by letter transmitted by the United States Postal Service about town business and his concerns as a town resident only,” Mace wrote. “(Vincelette) shall not direct his correspondence to (the Town Manager and five Selectboard members) personally while the orders remain in effect.”
As a result of the order, Vincelette was forced to give up a .22 rifle he shot squirrels with and a “couple old shotguns.” He did not indicate whether he plans on appealing the judge’s order when asked.
“I have a first amendment right that’s being just walked on,” Vincelette said in an interview with the Valley News at his cabin on Mink Brook where he’s lived since 1984. “And I have a second amendment right that’s just being walked on.”
The town manager and all five Selectboard members filed civil stalking petitions against Vincelette in response to his behavior during the public comment period of a Selectboard meeting in February, which resulted in the Hanover police officer in attendance escorting town officials to their cars.
“Look at your policeman,” Vincelette said, according to the meeting transcript. “You got an armed man here sitting with a gun because you need protection. You’re right. You do need protection and Joanna Whitcomb needs protection and Athos Rassias needs protection and Robert Houseman needs protection because they have committed federal crimes and I’ve been patient. I’ve waited patiently to get on the agenda. I’ve waited for almost 20 years. That seems like it’s patient enough.”
After roughly five minutes, Callaghan interrupted Vincelette to tell him his allotted time for public comment had expired.
“Your time is up too, you just don’t know it,” Vincelette replied.
He began his comments by accusing the town officials of committing crimes against “me and my family.”
In the six civil stalking petitions against him, town officials wrote that Vincelette “suffers under the misapprehensions that the Town of Hanover and Dartmouth College have ‘polluted’ Mink Brook by disposing of asphalt in the brook; that the town unlawfully took his properties from him for failure to pay the real estate taxes on those properties; and that the town ‘imprisoned’ him and his family by erecting a fence, pursuant to a Superior Court order, to prevent defendant from placing his personal junk materials on the town’s property.”
Town officials also stated that over the course of 30 years, Vincelette has “made veiled threats against the Town and its employees,” citing an incident in 2016 when he was arrested and convicted of criminal contempt of court after he “aggressively confronted town officials and a contractor attempting to carry out a court order” to remove “junk materials” from his property spilling onto the abutting Tanzi trail.
During a final hearing on one of the six stalking petitions Lebanon District Court this past April, Vincelette challenged the town’s allegations that he suffers from “misapprehensions” regarding pollution in Mink Brook, citing complaints he made to the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services in 2017 and 2018, along with other grievances with the town including the court-ordered fence erected by the town around Vincelette’s residence in 2016 and the 2017 seizure of his parcels of his land for lack of tax payments.
A 25-year Army National Guard veteran, Vincelette lives on a fixed income of military retirement and disability checks from a left shoulder injury sustained in service.
About a year into his “imprisonment,” Vincelette stepped into a rut and wrenched his lower spine.
He ended up checking himself into Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center for a week.
Vincelette said he told the doctors that he was “just wiped out” with exhaustion.
“I’m just wiped out and now I hurt my back,” he said in the hospital, not forgetting to mention that he was also there because “I believe somebody’s poisoned my water and it’s not a fantasy.”
He was prescribed antidepressant and antipsychotic medications, which he said he still takes.
“They said either I was bipolar or I had a fixed delusion, that (Hanover and Dartmouth) were actively polluting my water” he recalled. “But the people I was getting this from were actively polluting my water. I mean, you can’t make this up.”
But the judge said that the facts do not support Vincelette’s assertions. Inspections by the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services in 2018 in response to complaints by Vincelette regarding Hanover’s use and management of processed asphalt found no reasons for the department’s Waste Management Division to take action against the town, according to a letter from the department to the Hanover Public Works Department in October 2018.
“(Vincelette) has never successfully prosecuted any of his claims,” Mace wrote in his final order, granting the town’s six stalking petitions on May 15.
Mace also cited an October 2024 Selectboard meeting in which Vincelette was escorted out by police after his airing of past grievances escalated to aggression and obscenities.
In December 2025, Vincelette confronted Houseman in the town office building, accusing him of holding him and his wife prisoner and invoking his first and second amendment rights, Mace also noted in his final order.
“They treat me like a criminal because I’m trying to protect the water,” he lamented at his Mink Brook cabin.
While searching for suckerfish in the brook, he said, “they were here yesterday.”
