Welch accused of NEK shooting

BURLINGTON—A 34-year-old Haverhill man could face life in prison after being accused of shooting and killing Michael Pimental in 2018.
Federal prosecutors announced a new indictment last week against several co-conspirators involved in Pimental’s death, and they accused John Welch of shooting Pimental on Oct. 13, 2018.
Pimental’s bullet-riddled body was found by a property owner along the wooded edge of his driveway in Concord, Vermont on Oct. 14, 2018. The same day, Pimental’s girlfriend Krystal Whitcomb, 28, of Waterford, and Michael Hayes, 38, of Washington, D.C., were taken into custody by police in Benton after a traffic stop.
Investigators say the found blood belonging to Pimental in the silver Cadillac Hayes was driving at the time of the stop. The Cadillac was registered to Pimental. Police also recovered three firearms, 2,600 bags of heroin, and $20,000 in cash.
Authorities said they found Whitcomb and Pimental had been distributing heroin out of their residence in Waterford. They also charged her father, Shawn, in connection to the case.
In February 2019, Welch offered to sell a firearm to a person in New Hampshire, according to a news release from the U.S. District Attorney’s Office in Vermont. Shortly thereafter, law enforcement found Welch along the side of the road in Bath, trying to dig frozen ground with a shovel.

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