Salem police urged residents in part of town to shelter in place Tuesday night as officers searched for a fugitive they described as dangerous. Officers did not release the person's name, description, or the reason behind the warning, leaving residents with little more than an order to stay inside and lock their doors.
According to NBC Boston, police looking for a dangerous fugitive urged people in part of Salem to shelter in place Tuesday night, pointing to an area near the intersection of Main Street and Route 28, also known as Broadway. WMUR, however, reported that the shelter-in-place notice applied to residents in the Church Avenue and Route 28 area — a discrepancy between the two outlets' accounts of exactly where the warning was in effect.
Salem police said they were currently looking for a dangerous fugitive, per WMUR's report, but offered no further detail on the person's identity or what made them a threat.
Residents Asked to Watch for Suspicious Activity
Officers asked people to report any suspicious activity to the Salem Police Department, according to the same WMUR report. NBC Boston's account specified that anyone who sees suspicious activity in the area of Church Avenue and Route 28 was urged to call Salem Police, rather than approach anyone matching an unknown description.
As Boston 25 News reported, the alert was still a developing story with further updates expected as the search continued. Whether the fugitive has since been located or remains at large has not been verified.
Not Salem's First High-Alert Manhunt
Tuesday's search is not the first time Salem has found itself at the center of a tense law-enforcement operation. In a separate incident from December 2025, police activity in the town was tied to the manhunt for the suspected Brown University shooter, with law enforcement converging on an Extra Space Storage facility on Hampshire Road. Members of the Providence Police Department and at least one FBI negotiator were among those at that scene, per Boston 25 News's earlier coverage of that case.
During that same December episode, Methuen police said they were mobilizing resources near Route 28 close to the Methuen-Salem border to locate a suspect connected to an investigation into a recent death, while adding there was no information indicating an imminent risk to the public or residents of Methuen. It is not established whether Tuesday's fugitive search has any connection to that earlier case.
Salem has also seen fugitives run to ground closer to home. In one prior incident, police said Joseph Haynes, 30, of Tewksbury, Massachusetts, was arrested after a SWAT standoff at the Park View Inn, according to a report from Patch. Officers had found a stolen vehicle in the motel's parking lot on South Broadway before learning Haynes was holed up in a room, and the Southern New Hampshire Special Operations Unit was activated after he refused to leave or identify who else was inside. Haynes was ultimately held in custody on a fugitive-from-justice charge.
No such resolution has been confirmed in Tuesday's search. With police withholding the fugitive's identity and the specific reason for the danger warning, residents in the affected stretch of Salem were left to rely on the instruction that mattered most: stay inside, and call police if anything looks out of place.
