WEST GARDINER — By Monday morning, there was no outward indication that a person had been shot and killed outside 9 Yeaton Drive.
A shirtless young man who answered the door at the home where 41-year-old James Leslie Haskell Jr. of Chelsea died early Saturday morning declined to speak to a reporter about it.
The outside light was on, the dog was inside, no police were there. There was no barrier along the dirt drive that leads to two homes.
“The game plan was to do everything we needed to do there on Saturday,” said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety, on Monday afternoon. “There are no new developments.”
McCausland previously said police interviewed the person who did the shooting. He said the shooting death remains under investigation, and it is likely some of the people interviewed earlier will be interviewed a second or third time as police continue to put together what happened.
Haskell was dead when police arrived. McCausland said earlier there was no indication it was a suicide.
Kennebec County sheriff’s deputies went to the home in response to a 911 call about 2:50 a.m. Saturday. State police detectives joined them later.
People were at the home for a gathering at the time of the shooting, said McCausland, and all cooperated and were interviewed by police. No one was in custody as of Monday morning.
Haskell’s stepmother, Allison Haskell of North Waterboro, gave an interview with WCSH-TV, saying that while she had not seen her stepson in some time, he was working to get his life together.
She said he had struggled with drugs from a young age but his death was not related to that.
“We loved him and he’s gone,” Haskell said on camera.
She did not respond to a request to talk to the Kennebec Journal.
Public records show that Haskell spent extensive time in prison.
When he was 23, he pleaded guilty in Kennebec County Superior Court to gross sexual assault, burglary and reckless conduct, all of which occurred June 19, 1998, in Winthrop, where he lived at the time.
For the gross sexual assault, the most serious crime, he was ordered to serve 16 years in prison.
Jody Breton, deputy commissioner of the Maine Department of Corrections, said Haskell was released from prison on Aug. 31, 2012.
In April 2013, he was sentenced to six months in jail for eluding an officer and driving without a license two months earlier in Farmingdale. His address at the time was listed in North Waterboro.
He was indicted on a charge of violation of sex offender registration that occurred March 14-May 8, 2014, in Gardiner, where he was living at the time. He was sentenced to serve nine months and a day for that offense.
Betty Adams can be contacted at 621-5631 or at:
badams@centralmaine.com
Twitter: betadams
Send questions/comments to the editors.
