Coalition Statement on Berlin Police's Internal Review of Calls Before Murder-Suicide

May 18, 2026

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The murder of Sandra Marisol Fuentes Huaracha is a devastating reminder that domestic violence cases cannot be treated as isolated incidents. They must be understood as patterns of escalating danger, stalking, threats, weapons access, protective order violations, and fear.

The Berlin Police Department’s internal review identifies serious failures in the response to this case, including the handling of a reported protective order violation and the July 4 welfare check call, when law enforcement received information that Michael Gleason had made suicidal and homicidal statements. Those findings are painful, but they must also be a call to action.

Marisol did what society asks survivors to do. She reported. She sought protection. She participated in the legal process. She continued to raise concerns as the danger escalated. The systems around her needed to respond with urgency, coordination, and a full understanding of domestic violence lethality. When victims reach out repeatedly for help, it is often because they recognize that their lives are in danger.

The New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence is committed to working with law enforcement, prosecutors, courts, and community-based advocates to strengthen the response to domestic violence across our state. That work must include regular and ongoing training for officers, dispatchers, supervisors, and prosecutors on domestic violence dynamics, lethality risk, stalking, coercive control, strangulation, firearms, technology abuse, trauma responses, and the enforcement of protective orders.
Training alone is not enough. Every police department should have clear written policies for responding to domestic violence calls, welfare checks involving threats of homicide or suicide, reports of protective order violations, firearms and ammunition relinquishment, third-party contact, and technology-facilitated abuse. Those policies should require documentation, supervisory review, and follow-up when new information comes in. A survivor’s case should not depend on whether one individual officer recognizes the danger in the moment.

We also need stronger, routine communication between law enforcement and local crisis center advocates. A lethality assessment should not be treated as a single checkbox at the beginning of a case. When a survivor continues to report stalking, violations, threats, weapons, surveillance, or escalating behavior, law enforcement should be reconnecting that survivor with confidential advocates and safety planning resources. Advocates cannot direct police investigations, and police cannot access confidential advocacy communications, but regular collaboration and cross training can help ensure that officers understand risk factors and that survivors are not left to navigate escalating danger alone.
Marisol’s case also makes clear that our systems must improve how information is shared across criminal cases, civil protective order proceedings, bail hearings, law enforcement calls, and victim support services. When warning signs accumulate, someone must be responsible for seeing the whole picture.

The Coalition will continue to support reforms that improve domestic violence investigations, strengthen protective order enforcement, expand training, improve communication with local crisis centers, and ensure that technology abuse and social media access are addressed in protective orders. We also support careful review of how departments are implementing the corrective actions identified in this report, because public trust depends not only on acknowledging failure, but on proving that practices have changed.

No policy can guarantee that every act of violence will be prevented. But Marisol’s death demands that we do more than express sorrow. It demands that we build a response system where every report is documented, every escalation is taken seriously, every threat is assessed, every survivor is offered meaningful connection to support, and every agency understands its role in preventing the next tragedy.