A rifle-wielding gunman rampaged across Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday evening, killing 18 people and wounding at least 13 more at a bowling alley and a bar—putting the city on lockdown as a manhunt for the suspect stretched into the night.
Maine State Police Col. William Ross said an arrest warrant had been issued for Robert Card, 40, of Bowdoin, who “should be considered armed and dangerous.” He was charged with eight counts of murder; that’s expected to rise when the 10 additional victims are formally identified, Ross said.
Citing a Maine law enforcement bulletin, CBS News reported that Card is in the U.S. Army Reserve and has mental health issues, had threatened to shoot up a military base, and spent two weeks in a mental hospital this summer.
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“If people see him they should not approach Card or make any contact with him in any way,” Public Safety Commissioner Mike Sauschuck said.
The Daily Beast spoke to Card’s sister-in-law, Katie O’Neill, who said he’d had “an acute episode of mental health” in the past year, and had previously claimed to be hearing voices at the two locations he allegedly attacked.
Card recently began wearing powerful hearing aids to combat hearing loss and had been insisting to his family that he could hear people bashing him—including at Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley and Schemengees Bar, she said.
According to Ross, the first 911 calls came in at 6:56 p.m. about a shooting at Just-In-Time Recreation, a bowling alley on Mollison Way. Seven victims were found there with fatal gunshot wounds—one female and six males, Ross said.
At 7:08 p.m., more 911 calls flooded in from people reporting an active shooter at Schemengees Bar & Grille Restaurant on Lincoln Street, about a 10-minute drive from the bowling alley. Seven male victims were found inside and one more outside, Ross said, although their ages and identities were not disclosed. A third shooting location was reported to be a nearby Walmart Distribution Center though a Walmart spokesperson later said that was untrue.
Soon after, police released an image of a bearded man with a high-powered rifle, labeling him a “suspect for identification,” as well as an image of a white vehicle with its front bumper painted black. Officials said the vehicle was found in Lisbon, Maine, near a boat launch.
The reported death toll from the twin shootings varied widely in the chaotic hours after the rampage. Robert McCarthy, a Lewiston city councilor, said a city administrator confirmed the number was 22 with dozens more wounded, though officials said on Thursday that it was 18.
At a Thursday morning press briefing, officials declined to say anything about Card’s mental health or how he was able to get his hands on a firearm.
Chad Burke, an Air Force veteran and a member of the horseshoe club that Card belonged to, told The Daily Beast that Card was the main topic of conversation in the club’s group chat on Thursday. Burke said Card and his son played together at the Lisbon Left Hand Club Horseshoe League, but that he didn’t know too much more about either of them. What he does know, he said, is that local residents are now on edge.
“Everybody just thinks this is way abnormal in general for us here in Maine,” Burke said.
Just-In-Time Recreation was hosting a children’s bowling league when the gunman opened fire, witnesses told WMTW.
Attendees said they survived by huddling under tables, laying on top of their children, and barricading themselves in back rooms. “It felt like it lasted forever,” one survivor, Riley Dumont, told WMTW.
A Thursday morning post on Just-In-Time Recreation’s Facebook page said, “None of this seems real, but unfortunately it is. We are devastated for our community and our staff. We lost some amazing and whole hearted people from our bowling family and community last night.”
Schemengees was hosting a cornhole night when Card opened fire.
“It was just a fun night playing cornhole… it’s the last thing you’re expecting, right?” co-owner Kathy Lebel told the newspaper. “I still feel like this whole thing is a nightmare.”
Leroy Walker, an city councilman in Auburn, Maine, found out Thursday that his son Joseph, a manager at Schemengees, had been killed. He told The Daily Beast shortly before he got the news that he feared the worst.
“I’m going now to meet with my daughter-in-law,” Walker said in a text message around 11 a.m.. “Someone is coming to see her. I believe it is our notification that my son was one of the deceased.”
Mack Bray, an electrician who lives 45 minutes from Lewiston, told The Daily Beast he was in town for a union meeting when he stopped at Schemengees for a beer. He left just two hours before the mass shooting began.
“That’s what is so shocking,” he said. “There were a lot of people that were just, like, slaughtered not that far away from where we were discussing union business.”
Residents of Lewiston and neighboring Auburn were told to shelter in place amid the investigation.
“Please stay inside your home with the doors locked,” Maine State Police said.
McCarthy, the city councilor, said he lives a half-mile from the bowling alley and immediately locked up his house.
“You see it on the news and you say it’s never going to happen here and then it happens here and it just blows your mind,” McCarthy said on CNN.
Melinda Small, the owner of Legends Sports Bar and Grill, a quarter-mile from the bowling alley, said she herded everyone away from the doors and they stayed hunkered down until police arrived to escort them out.
“I am honestly in a state of shock. I am blessed that my team responded quickly and everyone is safe,” she told the Associated Press. “But the same time, my heart is broken for this area and for what everyone is dealing with. I just feel numb.”
Lewiston is Maine’s second largest city with a population of about 37,000 and sits midway between Augusta and Portland.
“I am heartbroken for our city and our people,” Mayor Carl Sheline said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “Lewiston is known for our strength and grit and we will need both in the days to come.”
Mills described Lewiston as “a special place, it’s a closeknit community with a long history of hard work, of persistence, of faith, of opening its big heart.”
“This city did not deserve this terrible assault on its citizens, on its peace of mind, on its sense of security,” she said Thursday morning. “No city does. No state, no people.”
President Biden was briefed on the mass shooting—one of more than 500 mass shootings in the country this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
