Tag: new hampshire

First Trans Representative in New Hampshire Arrested After Stalking Woman, Violating Restraining Order

The first openly transgender person elected to public office in New Hampshire has been jailed on charges related to stalking a victim who had a protective order against him. Stacie Laughton’s arrest comes just days after he was re-elected to the New Hampshire House as a Democrat.

Laughton, born Barry Charles Laughton Jr., was arrested on November 12 after his most recent violation of a stalking order that had been placed against him by an unidentified woman in his community in July. Laughton, 38, had contacted the victim over social media.

According to the Hudson Police Department, this is not the first time Laughton has violated his restraining order. In August, Laughton had similarly attempted to make contact with the victim, and was arrested in September for the violation. He was released from custody shortly after.

There was virtually no media coverage of his September arrest, which likely meant voters were unaware of it ahead of the November 8 elections, during which Laughton ran for re-election as a Libertarian Democrat candidate in Nashua’s 4th Ward.

Laughton placed second out of four candidates, securing him a seat in the House of Representatives. New Hampshire has the largest state House in the country with 400 representatives, and all three top finishers in the race took seats.

In addition to his recent stalking order violations, Laughton is on bail for a 2021 arrest in which he was charged with misusing the Nashua 911 emergency system.

Between May and July 2021, he sent seven texts to Nashua 911, prompting police officers to respond to his address. On each occasion, they determined there was no emergency. At the time, Laughton denied sending the texts and claimed that he was being “spoofed” by an unknown perpetrator.

He also complained that media coverage of the arrest was making him look bad.

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20-year-old hiker Emily Sotelo missing on popular New Hampshire trail

A New Hampshire hiker has disappeared after she set out on a popular trail in bone-chilling weather, authorities said.

Emily Sotelo, 20, was dropped off Sunday morning at Lafayette Place Campground in Franconia, with the intended hiking route of Mount Lafayette, Haystack and Flume, according to the New Hampshire Fish and Game Law Enforcement Division.

As temperatures in the area dropped to near zero, with 30- to 40-mph winds making the chill factor a frigid -30 degrees, Sotelo failed to return from the hike at the expected hour, and there have been no sightings of the woman.

Search and rescue crews scoured the ridge for the missing hiker throughout Sunday and continued looking for her Monday.

A National Guard Blackhawk helicopter was expected to assist in the search for the vanished hiker, station WMUR reported.

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New Hampshire student sues school after being suspended for off-campus text messages

A high school student in New Hampshire is suing the school district after he was suspended from the football team for insisting there are only two genders in private text messages. His lawsuit argues that the suspension was a violation of his first amendment rights.

The suit states that the freshman at Exeter High School was suspended from the football team for one game after the administration obtained a text conversation, outside of school grounds, that he had with another student over gender identity. The suit, filed on the student’s behalf by Christian-based organization Cornerstone Action, argues that he stated his Catholic-based belief that there are only two genders.

The lawsuit further argues that the school’s non-binary gender identity policy is an infringement of the student’s First Amendment rights.

The policy states the school’s community should respect student’s preferred name and pronoun related to their gender identity. Failure to respect others’ gender identities is a violation of the policy.

The student does not deny violating the policy.

“He in fact denied, and will continue to deny, that any person can belong to a gender other than that of ‘male’ or ‘female’” the lawsuit says.

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Gov’s order makes COVID vaccine registry mandatory

Governor Chris Sununu last week signed an executive order requiring everyone who receives a COVID-19 vaccine to have their immunizations registered with the state.

New Hampshire has been the only state without a vaccine registry, a list of who has received which vaccines. Though state law directed the Department of Health and Human Services to create the registry years ago, the state only began building the registry this year.

Sununu’s executive order will require health care providers to report every COVID-19 vaccine, suspending a part of the state vaccine registry law that allows patients to opt out of registering vaccines.

But the order will allow patients to have their immunization records removed from the registry after the pandemic is over.

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