By Nicholas Brown
Staff Writer

Michael Briggs, a Manchester police officer who died after being shot in the line of duty, has roots that run deep in his hometown of Epsom.

Friends describe Briggs, 35, as a consummate hard worker, who was a great family man, and who lived to serve others in need.

Briggs died at Manchester’s Elliot Hospital on Tuesday, Oct. 17, about a day and a half after he was shot in the head while on his normal bicycle patrol on Manchester’s east side.

Roger Amadon, who was chief of Epsom police when he hired Briggs part-time in 1996, visited Briggs in the intensive care unit on the day he was shot.

“That boy was like a son to me,” said Amadon. “It’s just so ungodly unfair.”

Epsom Fire Chief Stewart Yeaton described Briggs as “like a brother to me and my brother Bill.”

For years, Briggs worked on the Yeatons’ family farm. Briggs took his two young sons to visit the farm several weeks ago.

“I can’t even think straight right now,” said Stewart Yeaton. “I have no words to describe this.”

Yeaton said Briggs hung around the farm from about fifth grade on, and even made a point to visit the Yeatons when Briggs was serving as a Marine.

“He was a great family man,” he said. “He loved his sons, and he always had something to laugh about.”

Briggs grew up in Epsom and attended Pembroke Academy before joining the Marine Corps, where he served for four years and was decorated with numerous honors.

According to Union Leader reports, Yeaton then served for six years as a correctional officer before joining the Manchester Police Department in 2001. In 2004, Briggs rushed into a burning Manchester building to rescue an elderly woman and a teenager in a wheelchair, according to reports.

Manchester Police Chief John Jaskolka said somber police officers in his department all had stories to tell about Briggs on the day he was shot.

“Everyone will tell you the same thing,” said Jaskolka. “He’s a great guy who always went about his business and never complained about a thing.”

Steve Auger, who grew up friends with Briggs in Epsom and worked with him for a short time at Manchester’s Valley Street Jail, said Briggs was enjoying his life patroling Manchester’s streets on bicycle.

“I just ran into him the other day and and he said he loved his job ­ loved being a cop,” said Auger, a Derry firefighter/paramedic.

Auger, who was two years ahead of Briggs in school, described him as, “probably the nicest guy you’ll ever meet.”

Bob Kitson, who also grew up in Pembroke and worked with Briggs at the Epsom Police Department, said he remembers Briggs’ dedication to fair police work.

“He had no attitudes,” said Kitson, now a patrolman with Pembroke police. “If he was dealing with somebody, he always dealt with them like a human being.”

Corinne Foreman-Doherty, Briggs’ guidance counselor at Pembroke Academy, said Briggs’ reputation as a police officer and Marine mirror her memories of him as a student.

“We remember him as a good kid,” she said. “He came to school and he got his work done.”

Doherty said a phrase Briggs wrote in his high school yearbook exemplified Briggs’ character as a young man.

It reads, “Life is short. Live it to the fullest.”

On the day Briggs died, New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte said she intends to seek a grand jury indictment on a capital murder charge against Michael “Stix” Addison, 26, who was arrested in Boston a day after the shooting.

Ayotte said prosecutors will seek the death penalty, which New Hampshire law allows in cases involving slain police officers.

For many of Briggs’ friends and coworkers, his death invokes the the name Jeremy Charron, an Epsom police officer who was shot and killed during a routine traffic stop in 1997. Charron was the last New Hampshire police officer killed on the job.

Amadon described Briggs’ death as a “terrible flashback,” but said, “Michael died doing what he wanted.”