Crazed attacker goes on rampage.

On Wednesday, November 3 at 1:30 a.m., David Oeser of Eliot, Maine, was listening to the election results when he heard someone pounding loudly on his locked front screen door. Thinking that it might be his son, Oeser opened the interior house door and saw a 6' 2", 330-pound stranger standing there.

Oeser told the November 5 Portsmouth Herald that the man, later identified as Mark Murphy, "was acting crazy ... yelling about the election or something. The next I know, he's hollering he's going to get me. I swear he was acting like Hannibal Lecter; he was crazy." When Murphy tried to break through the screen door, Oeser slammed the other door and began yelling, "Go away, please leave."

Murphy ignored his pleas and kept trying to break in, and when Oeser noticed that his house door was buckling, he ran to his bedroom, shut his door, and loaded his pistol. Oeser later recalled that as he finished loading his pistol, "the door crashed in." Oeser pleaded with Murphy to get him to leave, saying, "Just go home, forget all about this, just go away," and, "stop or I will shoot."

But Murphy just kept coming, and so Oeser fired, striking Murphy in the chest. Incredibly, even after being shot, Murphy continued his attack on Oeser, punching him in the head and torso and grabbing for his gun. The two men struggled briefly until Murphy fell and hit the bed. Oeser then grabbed the gun and fled into the kitchen to call 911.

After the altercation was over, Oeser was sorry that he had to shoot Murphy, but he also knew that he didn't have a choice: "It was the look in his eyes. He was crazed, just out to hurt someone."

The motives for the attack are unknown. Upon being questioned, Oeser said of Murphy, "I didn't know him at all. We had no prior contact. He had no reason to pick my house; I didn't know him from Adam."

Later it was learned that Murphy had a history of assaulting people and that at the time of the attack, he was, in tact, out on bail after having assaulted a man in a diner in Kittery the previous day. The attack in the diner, according to the November 4 Press Herald, was also unprovoked. A waitress who witnessed the attack said that Murphy had acted oddly, "[O]ver ... 15 or 20 minutes ... he hadn't touched his breakfast. He would just keep staring into space or at the guys or whatever."

Then, after awhile, Murphy walked over to another table, said something to another customer, and started punching the man in the face and head. Other customers eventually subdued him and held him for police. In addition to these incidents, reported the Portsmouth Herald, Murphy had tour prior convictions for assault, one of them on a corrections officer.

At this time no charges have been filed, while the police await a psychiatric evaluation of Murphy. In the altercation Oeser suffered only minor injuries. Murphy is hospitalized in critical condition.