Warning: This story includes discussion of suicidal ideation.
Michael Foley drove his purple 1995 Chevrolet Prizm down Galaxy Way to New Hampshire's remote New Boston Space Force Station on May 13, 2022. Then, with his headlights off, he exited, standing outside the gate with a knife in his right hand and an air-powered pellet pistol tucked out of view in his left.
"FBI," the 33-year-old Massachusetts veteran reportedly told the guards after they told him to drop his weapons and asked what he wanted. "FBI or your life means nothing to me."
A minute after uttering those words, Foley raised the BB gun. One guard pulled the trigger of his rifle, missing the armed man with two rounds. A security contractor also fired a shot, killing the man.
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A report released by New Hampshire Attorney General John M. Formella late last week ruled Foley's death as justified. Military contractor Peter White, who works with security company Lockwood Hills, fired the round that struck Foley in the forehead. New Boston Police Officer Shane Morton was the officer who fired shots that missed. Both were cleared in the investigation.
But the report also offered the first in-depth details and account of what happened 11 months ago at the Space Force installation tucked away in rural New Hampshire, including the background that Foley's family said he previously served in the Army, that he had been in contact with the FBI just days before, and that he had expressed a desire to die to multiple people and law enforcement agencies.
Deidre Forster, a spokeswoman for the National Guard Bureau, confirmed to Military.com that Foley served in the Massachusetts Army National Guard from August 2008 to August 2014, where he reached the rank of specialist and served "honorably" as a wheeled vehicle mechanic.
Officers received permission to search Foley's car from his family, according to the investigation findings, and believed he was living in his automobile. They also located two propane tanks and a gasoline tank that at first was believed to be a potential explosive device, but was later determined not to be the case.
A subsequent search of Foley's phone showed him texting a woman two weeks prior to the incident at New Boston Space Force Station, expressing suicidal thoughts.
That woman contacted the police in Massachusetts, in the city where Foley was at the time, to express her concerns for his well-being. Officers pinged Foley's phone, and he spoke with them, assuring law enforcement he was fine; he was put in touch with a community counseling center in the area. Five days later, the local police were notified that Foley had reached out to a suicide hotline.
On May 11, 2022, Foley had called another hotline expressing his desire to blow up the community counseling center recommended to him and hoping police would kill him, the report detailed. Once he was contacted by law enforcement again, he apologized for his words and said he wasn't going to hurt anyone. Police put out a notice to be on the lookout for him.
Law enforcement agencies contacted his estranged mother, who said that her son "had struggled with mental health, was in the Army before, but left and went to jail for something," according to records of her May 11, 2022, interview with law enforcement.
A few hours later that evening, Foley called the FBI's National Threat Operations Center Tip Line, saying he "wanted to do something terrorist to others or himself" and asking for mental health services. He also confessed to "being a veteran and having stolen a Humvee while in the Army National Guard in 2012," the report detailed.
Prior to his arrival at the Space Force station on May 13, Foley had done an online search for military bases in New England and read the Wikipedia entry for New Boston Space Station.
The station has had a long history in the Department of the Air Force.
During World War II, the U.S. Army Air Corps -- the precursor to the Air Force -- used land in New Boston near the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport as a bombing range for airplanes.
Following WWII, the range was deactivated and, in the 1960s, the post became a satellite tracking station. In the late '80s, it was transferred to Air Force Space Command.
Shortly after the U.S. Space Force became a service, New Boston's satellite operation was transferred to its command in 2021.
New Boston is home to the 23rd Space Operations Squadron, which provides satellite capabilities to "more than 190 Department of Defense, national and civilian satellites performing intelligence, weather, navigation, early-warning and communications operations," according to the Space Force.
Veterans and service members experiencing a mental health emergency can call the Veteran Crisis Line, 988 and press 1. Help also is available by text, 838255, and via chat at VeteransCrisisLine.net.
-- Thomas Novelly can be reached at thomas.novelly@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomNovelly.
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