In an expanding manhunt,police fanned out across southern Maine with an arrest warrant for their main suspect,Robert R. Card,a US Army reservist who law enforcement said had been committed to a mental health facility over the summer.
They circulated photographs of a bearded man in a brown hooded sweatshirt and jeans at one of the crime scenes armed with what appeared to be a semi-automatic rifle.
Police officers speak with a motorist at a roadblock in Lisbon,Maine.AP
Public school districts in the area cancelled classes and police urged residents to stay indoors.
“This is a dark day for Maine,” Governor Janet Mills said at a press conference. “Mr Card is considered armed and dangerous and police advise that Maine people should not approach him under any circumstances.”
Maine State Police found a white SUV they believe Card drove to the town of Lisbon,about 11 kilometres to the southeast,and urged people to remain indoors in both Lewiston and Lisbon. Early on Thursday (Friday AEST),police also told residents in the town of Bowdoin,about 19 kilometres east of Lewiston,to shelter in place. Card lives in Bowdoin,according to public records.
There was an eerie quiet in Lewiston and Lisbon,with almost no cars on the roads and just a few people outside. Many downtown businesses appeared to be closed.
A Maine law enforcement bulletin identified Card,40,as a trained firearms instructor at the US Army Reserve base in Saco,Maine,who recently said he had been hearing voices and had other mental health issues.
He threatened to shoot up the National Guard base in Saco and was “reported to have been committed to mental health facility for two weeks during summer 2023 and subsequently released,” according to the bulletin from the Maine Information&Analysis Centre,a unit of Maine State Police. Reuters could not confirm the details reported in the bulletin.
The US Army said Card was a sergeant and a petroleum supply specialist in the Army Reserve who had never been deployed in combat since enlisting in 2002.
The attacks began shortly before 7pm at the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley,where one female patron and six males were shot dead,police said,without giving the victims’ ages.
A short time later,they received reports of a shooting at Schemengees Bar&Grille Restaurant,about five kilometres away. Seven males were fatally shot dead there,police said. Three victims who were taken to hospitals later died of their injuries.
Doctors at Maine Central Health Care were treating eight survivors,with three in critical condition,Chief Medical Officer Dr John Alexander told reporters.
“In a split second your world gets turn upside down for no good reason,” Schemengees posted on its Facebook page. “How can we make any sense of this.”
Just-In-Time said in a Facebook post that its staff were “devastated for our community.”
“None of this seems real,but unfortunately it is,” it said in the post. “We lost some amazing and whole hearted people from our bowling family and community last night. There are no words to fix this or make it better.”
Jessica Karcher said one of the wounded was her son Justin Karcher,who was shot in the spine and kidneys and was in surgery. He witnessed his father,Jean Karcher,being shot and killed in 2019 during an altercation in a Walmart parking lot,according to Lewiston’s Sun Journal newspaper.
Lewiston is a former textile hub about 56 kilometres north of Maine’s largest city,Portland,and home to about 38,000 people.
The small US town of Lewiston,Maine has been rocked by the deadliest mass shooting in the country this year.
Guns are lightly regulated in Maine,a largely rural state near the northeast border with Canada where about half of all adults live in a household with a gun,according to a 2020 study by RAND Corporation.
Maine does not require a permit to buy or carry a gun,and it does not have so-called “red flag” laws seen in some other states that allow law enforcement to temporarily disarm people deemed to be dangerous.
Reuters
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