Man enters insanity plea in killing of mother at hospital

NORTH HAVERHILL, N.H. – A man accused of killing his mother last year in a New Hampshire hospital intensive care unit has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Fifty-year-old Travis Frink appeared in Grafton County Superior Court on Tuesday. A judge accepted his plea and committed him to the state prison’s secure psychiatric unit for up to five years.

Frink initially pleaded not guilty to shooting 70-year-old Pamela Ferriere multiple times. Lawyers considering an insanity defence wrote in court documents Frink told police he was taken from the womb and subjected to a “sadistic scientific experiment.”

Frink also told police he had not taken medication nor slept in a long time before the September 2017 shooting at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon. Frink has been hospitalized in the past and diagnosed with bipolar and schizoaffective disorder.