The man accused of a deadly shooting at a Nashua country club last year plans to argue that his actions were rooted in mental illness.
Hunter Nadeau, 24, opened fire at the on-site restaurant at Sky Meadow Country Club on September 20, 2025. The shooting killed 59-year-old Robert Steven DeCesare, who was dining with his wife and daughter, and injured several others.
DeCesare was a Nashua resident at the time and grew up in Salem, N.H.
Court records filed this week show that Nadeau’s attorneys will argue that “he is not criminally responsible for that conduct because at the time of the conduct, he was suffering from a mental disease or defect.”
Nadeau, a former employee at the country club, told a Nashua Police Department detective after the shooting that he carried out the attack to “punish the wealthy because they were not helping the poor,” according to his arrest affidavit.
He also stated he was “tired of the elites taking all the money” and chose the country club because he had previously worked there and knew that a person “had to have money to have a membership there.”
Nadeau’s jury trial is set for the weeks of June 14 and Jun 21, 2027.
Under New Hampshire law, someone who was insane at the time they committed an act isn’t held criminally responsible for what they did. The burden of proving this falls on Nadeau and his attorneys, not on the state.
According to court documents, police who made contact with Nadeau following the shooting saw that he had self-inflicted “incised” wounds on his body. When officers spoke with him, he told them he was a “bad guy.”