THE FRONT PAGE of the Addison Independent on Nov. 2, 2023

Acts of gun violence shook the community on several occasions in 2023, as shootings claimed the lives of four in and around Addison County. 

In June, one man was killed and another critically injured in a double shooting in Leicester. At around 9:55 p.m. on June 4, Vermont State Police were called to a disturbance at 1352 Route 7. When law enforcement officers arrived at the scene, they found one man dead, 35-year-old Scott Lanpher, and his brother, 31-year-old Larry Lanpher Jr., suffering from gunshot injuries. Larry Lanpher was taken to Porter Hospital and then airlifted to University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington. He was later discharged. 

Authorities said the shooting was a targeted event, and that there was no broader threat to the general public. In August, a suspect was arrested on an unrelated federal charge in Maine. Zaquikon Roy, 35, of Brooklyn, N.Y., was arrested on a federal charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Vermont State Police detectives investigating the Leicester shooting believed that Roy initially fled to New York City after the Leicester shooting.

Another county resident was fatally shot in September, when police say a juvenile watching a fight between two women at a Waltham home picked up a gun that had apparently been dropped by one of the women and shot her multiple times. The victim, Michelle Kilbreth, 48, of Waltham, was killed by gunshots to her torso, according to the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Burlington.

Police reported Kilbreth got into a physical altercation with another woman who lived in the neighborhood at around 7 p.m. on Sept. 15. Kilbreth had a handgun in her possession, but at some point, she lost control of the weapon, and the youth picked up the gun and fired it, striking Kilbreth multiple times.

Residents in and around Waltham grappled with the loss of Kilbreth, who was known by many in the community as a school bus driver for Vergennes-area schools. By year’s end, authorities hadn’t determined whether they’d charge the juvenile involved in the shooting. 

In October, former Addison County resident Honoree Fleming, 77, was shot and killed on a rail trail in Castleton. Fleming was found dead on the afternoon of Oct. 5 on the Delaware & Hudson Rail Trail, near the Castleton campus of the Vermont State University. 

Fleming was a retired dean at the university and had previously served on the faculty of other educational institutions, including Middlebury College. She and Ron Powers raised their two sons in Middlebury. Police reported Fleming died from a gunshot wound to the head, and authorities hadn’t identified a suspect in the shooting as of the year’s end.

In November, a 14-year-old Burlington youth was released on bail into the custody of his family after pleading innocent in court to charges he’d shot and killed a 14-year-old Shelburne youth in Bristol. 

According to authorities, Madden Gouveia and Hussein Mohamed were sitting in a car with two other teenagers outside a North Street home during the evening of Oct. 30. Police reported the teenagers were passing around a handgun, and Mohamed allegedly was fooling around with the weapon when it fired, striking Gouveia in the back, resulting in a fatal injury.

Mohamed appeared in Addison County Superior Court, Criminal Division, in Middlebury the next morning, pleading innocent to charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter and aggravated assault. The teenager is being charged as an adult. Mohamed was ultimately released on conditional bail, following a two-hour-long hearing on Nov. 1, during which Addison County State’s Attorney Eva Vekos withdrew an earlier motion to hold the teenager without bail. 

Vekos explained her decision to withdraw the motion was made following testimony provided during the hearing by a Vermont Department of Corrections official, who described the limitations of holding a juvenile without bail in a state that doesn’t operate a juvenile detention center.

As 2023 came to a close, the case was still making its way through the court system. 

The Independent newsroom could not recall a time when Addison County saw so many fatal shootings in a single year.