Portsmouth Herald • 4th December 2025

In reversal, Portsmouth High to allow prayer on basketball court

PORTSMOUTH — A Portsmouth High School boys basketball player will be permitted to pray on the court before games this season, reversing a decision handed down by school administrators last year. Anthony Ferola, now a senior on a Clippers team with Division I state championship aspirations, invited teammates to pray with him near halfcourt last season just minutes before tipoff. But after parent complaints about the Catholic prayer occurring on the gym floor, Ferola was informed he had to move hi...

Portsmouth Herald • 1st December 2025

NH seeks to revoke bail of Portsmouth parking garage death suspect

PORTSMOUTH — Prosecutors trying Andrew Lucas for negligent homicide in a fatal fall August 2023 Portsmouth parking garage incident want his bail revoked after police reported viewing a video of him attacking his girlfriend's brother.

The 26-year-old Lucas is charged with 13 alleged crimes in the death of Rochester resident Zachary Colbroth, who was 28. Charges leveled against Lucas include two Class B felony counts of negligent homicide, two Class B felony counts of second degree assault, a Cla...

Portsmouth Herald • 24th November 2025

European bird, rarely seen in US, spotted in Portsmouth

PORTSMOUTH — Tori Tucker is presently the envy of all her birdwatching friends. The Seacoast resident took a stroll Nov. 21 through South Cemetery, where she spotted a bird that didn’t appear local to the area. Perched on a gravestone and seated in the grass, the bird meandered through the historic grounds with Tucker nearby quietly snapping photographs. She dashed off the images to her avian enthusiast friends and quickly received excited responses.The sighting turned out to be a white whale-le...

Portsmouth Herald • 24th November 2025

Last Black Friday at Mall at Fox Run: Will Santa be there?

NEWINGTON — A red and green-themed Santa Claus village awaits his arrival at Mall at Fox Run, where garland, tinsel and bright bulbs adorn the ceilings and giving trees from Hometown Holiday Helpers are on display.

Seasonal cheer is in full swing, but the end is nigh for the mall. The upcoming Black Friday and holiday season will be the last for shoppers who frequent the Mall at Fox Run in pursuit of gifts. Days are waning before its impending 2026 demolition.

With each passing week, the mall...

Portsmouth Herald • 20th November 2025

Salty Spirits 'hole in the wall' oyster and cocktail bar coming to Kittery Foreside

KITTERY, Maine — Salty Spirits, a Maine oyster and cocktail bar, will join the Foreside dining scene, opening mid-December near the town's waterfront under the direction of the mother-and-son-led McCluskey group.

Deb and Michael McCluskey’s latest venture will operate next to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard gate directly opposite Lil’s Cafe, the crown jewel of the pair's burgeoning portfolio.

“I just think it kind of … fills that need that hasn’t been down here. You can go up Route 1 to Robert’s...

Portsmouth Herald • 6th November 2025

Tina Sawtelle out as Music Hall CEO after canceling fundraiser with abortion film

PORTSMOUTH — Tina Sawtelle has left her position as president and chief executive of The Music Hall after community criticism for canceling a Joan G. Lovering Health Center fundraiser featuring an abortion rights film.

The Music Hall’s board of trustees on Nov. 6 announced Sawtelle’s exit effective the same day. The trustees did not immediately disclose whether Sawtelle resigned or if she was let go.

“All I can confirm right now is that it was a separation from employment,” said Ryan Klink, Th...

Portsmouth Herald • 30th October 2025

Geno Marconi gets plea deal, agrees to resign as NH port director

PORTSMOUTH — Geno Marconi will step down as New Hampshire’s director of Ports and Harbors as part of a plea deal to end his criminal prosecution by the state.The 74-year-old Marconi submitted a notice of intent to plead guilty to a Class A misdemeanor charge of violating the Driver Privacy Act, according to an Oct. 30 filing. Marconi was indicted by a Rockingham County grand jury last October on two Class B felony counts for allegedly tampering with witnesses and informants and falsifying physic...

Portsmouth Herald • 29th October 2025

Mall at Fox Run demolition and Seacoast Landing plans slowly emerging

NEWINGTON — The anticipated start date of the impending demolition of the Mall at Fox Run is being slightly delayed.

Torrington Properties is the mall’s owner and developer of Seacoast Landing, the anticipated $500 million commercial redevelopment coming to Newington to replace the single-level 600,000-square-foot mall, which opened in 1983.

The razing of the mall could take three to six months, according to Newington planner John Krebs and Gregg Mikolaities, an engineering consultant for Torr...

Portsmouth Herald • 27th October 2025

Eliot man rescued after jumping from Sarah Long Bridge

PORTSMOUTH — An Eliot, Maine, man was pulled from the frigid Piscataqua River alive on Oct. 27 after jumping from the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge, according to authorities.

The man was rescued shortly after 10 a.m. by the lobster boat Sweet Jane on the New Hampshire side of the span, according to Kittery police Lt. John Desjardins, the department’s interim chief.

“He rode his bicycle from Eliot up on the bridge and jumped,” Desjardins said.

The lobster boat brought the man to the Atlantic Marin...

Portsmouth Herald • 23rd October 2025

Witnesses in Panetta trial stunned by fatal fall from Portsmouth parking garage

BRENTWOOD — Emotional testimony on the death Zachary Colbroth was given Oct. 22 by two witnesses present for his fatal three-story fall from a downtown Portsmouth parking garage in August 2023.

Prosecutors called five more witnesses to the stand in Vincenzo Panetta’s negligent homicide trial.

Friends Christine Flammia and Lillie Worthen were at the Portsmouth Gas Light Co. nightclub for a friend’s birthday celebration. After the clock turned past midnight on Aug. 26, 2023, the women and a thir...

Portsmouth Herald • 19th October 2025

Portsmouth High basketball player told not to pray on court: Was that legal?

PORTSMOUTH — Anthony Ferola, a 17-year-old Portsmouth High School senior, grew religious his freshman year, using prayer as a way of addressing anxiety and later as a source of comfort following his mother's breast cancer diagnosis.

Baptized in the Catholic Church, Ferola is coming more into his faith on his own accord, reading the Bible and attending church services locally with his paternal grandparents. Ferola, a member of the Clippers' varsity boys basketball team, has brought his beliefs o...

Portsmouth Herald • 16th October 2025

Portsmouth Naval Shipyard workers and others seek food, fuel aid during shutdown

KITTERY, Maine — Some Portsmouth Naval Shipyard civilian employees have turned to Footprints food pantry and the Mainspring social services collective since the Oct. 1 start of the U.S. government shutdown.

Yard workers have inquired about food and fuel assistance in the two weeks since government funding expired, setting up a showdown between Democrat and Republican lawmakers in the nation’s capital.

“We’ve had a few phone calls,” said Tim Jacobs, Footprints’ market manager, about Portsmouth...

Portsmouth Herald • 24th September 2025

How Portsmouth Naval Shipyard was saved from closure 20 years ago: 'It's worth dying for'

KITTERY, Maine — They showed up in force and en masse, thousands of Portsmouth Naval Shipyard workers donning yellow shirts with a fighting spirit.

Twenty years ago, in 2005, a U.S. Department of Defense-appointed commission voted to remove Portsmouth Naval Shipyard from the list of potential military bases to close, saving thousands of jobs for Seacoast residents and sparing the generational shipyard from death.

Paul O’Connor, president of Metal Trades Council union at the shipyard at the tim...

Portsmouth Herald • 23rd September 2025

Mall at Fox Run shop owners seek new homes before expected demolition: 'I love it here'

NEWINGTON — Small business owners in the Mall at Fox Run are on the hunt for new homes ahead of their leases expiring in January before the mall's anticipated demolition and redevelopment.

Fox Run Dance Hall and Studio, Sweet Josie’s Candy Shoppe and One Love Cuisine, a Jamaican and Caribbean-inspired eatery in the mall’s food court, don’t have new locations lined up yet.

Others, like Cottage Chic, a furniture, art and home decor business, and Mugshots, an apparel store, will soon move to the...

Portsmouth Herald • 16th September 2025

ICE flights paused at Pease in Portsmouth: Protesters urge leaders to act

PORTSMOUTH — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement flights in and out of Portsmouth International Airport at Pease have been paused, but the question remains whether they will resume.

“In the past 12 days, I don't believe we've had any flights,” Paul Brean, executive director for the Pease Development Authority, said Sept. 16. “We're a publicly funded airport. Homeland Security dictates where they're going to operate these flights. I'm not aware that there will be any other flights in the ve...

Portsmouth Herald • 11th September 2025

'How do they expect us to live?': SNAP food aid cuts hit NH residents

PORTSMOUTH — When times get tough, Lauri Cadieux returns to her longtime mantra: “Believe and breathe.”

The 60-year-old resident of the downtown Margeson Apartments is one of millions of Americans facing reductions in federal monthly food benefits. The hits came after President Donald Trump signed what he calls “One Big Beautiful Bill,” into law on the Fourth of July.

Cadieux, a Type II diabetic, is a 14-year resident of the Margeson Apartments, a Portsmouth Housing Authority property. She sai...

Portsmouth Herald • 10th September 2025

'We want to save lives': Eli Robinson's suicide has NH, ME studying bridge barriers

KITTERY, Maine — Police officer Danny Contois' opportunity to step in and save a life came about quickly.

Three deaths by suicide this spring motivated the FBI-certified crisis negotiator with the Kittery Police Department to regularly patrol the Piscataqua River Bridge on Interstate 95, looking for people in distress.

Contois found a woman in a stopped car in the northbound breakdown lane May 29. As the sedan’s hazard lights flashed, Contois, who was driving south, turned his car around on Ma...

Portsmouth Herald • 6th September 2025

Blue Angels at Thunder Over NH Air Show 2025: Rain-shortened thriller at Pease

PORTSMOUTH — Tens of thousands of people gathered to see the Navy's Blue Angels in the 2025 Thunder Over New Hampshire Air Show at Pease Air National Guard Base in a thrilling Saturday, Sept. 6 performance that was cut short due to rain.The Blue Angels demonstration team, based at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida, appeared in Portsmouth for the first time since 2012 with a second show scheduled Sunday, Sept. 7.Performers also include the Vermont Air National Guard F-35A Demo Team, the...

Portsmouth Herald • 4th September 2025

Ex-PHS coach Joseph Auger's attorney alleges 'intimidation' in sex sting arrest

PORTSMOUTH — Joseph Auger's attorney is arguing his statements to authorities cannot be used against his client after he was allegedly taken down by Maine State Police troopers and handcuffed at gunpoint in an April sex sting.

William Bly, representing the ex-Portsmouth High School assistant track coach, contends Auger made "involuntary" comments to undercover agents at a South Portland, Maine hotel. He states they shouldn't be used by federal prosecutors, despite Auger waiving his Miranda righ...

Portsmouth Herald • 27th August 2025

I-95 median barrier: $4.6M project approved after NH highway deaths

HAMPTON — A nearly $4.6 million contract has been awarded for the construction of a five-mile median barrier on Interstate 95 in New Hampshire with the goal to prevent highway deaths.

The fully federally-funded package was approved by the state Executive Council Aug. 27.

The interstate barrier will stretch from mile marker 8 in North Hampton north of state Route 151, through Greenland to mile marker 13.3 in Portsmouth, ending north of the Sherburne Road bridge, according to New Hampshire Depar...

Portsmouth Herald • 20th August 2025

Eli Robinson's schizophrenia: What family learned before tragic end

RYE — When the voices in his head warned of trouble, Eli Robinson bought a crossbow.

His mother, Elisabeth Robinson, recalled her middle child’s auditory hallucinations and spotting him in her yard with the weapon one morning. Eli clutched the crossbow, intent on defending her.

The boy who built forts and enjoyed hero narratives in movies and imaginary games as a child grew to act like a soldier intent on protecting his family.

“I woke up and he was outside without a shirt on with the crossbo...

Portsmouth Herald • 13th August 2025

'Is my family safe?' Eli Robinson's terrifying mental illness and the fight to save him

RYE — Eli Robinson awoke from a medically induced coma last November, his sister and brother at his hospital bedside. One week prior, Eli attempted suicide, jumping off the 150-foot-high Piscataqua River Bridge into the swift current below. Instances of a person surviving a jump from the Interstate 95 span connecting Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Kittery, Maine are rare. Eli became one of the few, suffering a collapsed lung and several broken ribs.Eli, 34, made a vow to his siblings.“(Eli) said,...

Portsmouth Herald • 7th August 2025

UNH to lay off 23 employees, cut 13 unfilled positions, school president says

DURHAM — Thirty-six jobs at the University of New Hampshire — including 13 unfilled positions — were cut Aug. 7 as part of the state flagship school’s ongoing $17.5 million budget reduction. Twenty-three UNH employees were notified Thursday their jobs were being eliminated, according to Elizabeth Chilton, the school’s president. Another 10 employees are seeing their hours reduced, Chilton added.Additional cutbacks are being felt across the university. “We recognize how hard these changes are for...

Portsmouth Herald • 31st July 2025

Pease civilian workers face layoffs amid National Guard cuts: Air safety concerns raised

PORTSMOUTH — Civilian employees of Pease Air National Guard Base are at risk of losing their jobs this fall due to expected military cuts, according to New Hampshire’s congressional delegation.

Pease, home of the 157th Air Refueling Wing, would lose 10 personnel at the start of October under a current National Guard Bureau proposal to lay off 10.7% of its entire civilian workforce, the delegation says. Pilots within the 157th Air Refueling Wing fly KC-46A Pegasus tankers, which are maintained a...