The quiet town of Lewiston was added this Wednesday evening to the list of American place names — from Uvalde to Parkland, from Columbine to Sandy Hook — forever linked to the tragic epidemic of gun violence. A reserve soldier named Robert Card, a 40-year-old shooting instructor with a history of mental health problems, killed at least 18 people in two mass shootings, one at a bowling alley hosting a children’s tournament and the other at a popular restaurant with billiards and darts. 13 people were also injured in the attacks.
With about 40,000 residents, Lewiston is the second largest city in Maine, a sparsely populated state in the northeast of the country. This Thursday dawned and much of Androscoggin County turned into a ghost town. The killer, whom Democratic Gov. Janet Mills described as an “armed and very dangerous” man in a morning news conference at City Hall, fled after the massacre and was still unaccounted for nearly 24 hours later.
Police urged (but did not order) residents not to leave their homes and to take extreme precautions. The warning was expanded to the southern part of neighboring Sagadahoc County in the afternoon. The streets of the cities where the events took place, Lewiston and Lisbon, looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie with a handful of poorly paid extras: a mix of homeless people, clueless drug addicts and rough men who didn’t like doing anything others told them. they say. People like Al, who came up with a theory about Card’s whereabouts while filling up his truck. “He is very far from here, lost in a forest. I’m not afraid; “I’m armed too.”
Journalists from across the country converged at dawn at the epicenters of the tragedy, access to which was blocked by heavily armed police. From the Spare Time Recreation bowling alley, where Card stormed in shortly before 7 p.m. armed with a military rifle with a scope, leaving seven people dead, to Schemenggees Bar & Grille, where he killed another eight people. Dozens of agents from various local, state and federal agencies, including 80 FBI employees, fanned out across a vast forest area already tinged with the colors of fall. In this part of the world, finding someone with resources to escape is a serious matter. Escape seemed like an almost impossible mission. Meanwhile, the Coast Guard was patrolling the Kennebec River.
After completing the first part of his mission, Card drove a white SUV through streets of single-family homes between one point of the massacre and another. About six kilometers and 10 minutes by car separate the two places. Melissa Holmes, a neighbor of the bowling alley, was picking up one of her three children from a nearby gym when it all happened. He didn’t hear the shots. “It could have been any of them,” he recalled, still afraid, at the door of his home on a street full of dilapidated houses. “I can’t believe this is happening; You always watch on TV when something is happening somewhere else and pray for those people; Now we need your prayers for us. And let them find that bastard as quickly as possible so we can begin our collective mourning.”
Near the schematics, Laurie Ford, who opened her house to allow journalists and police officers to use the bathroom (“That’s what we do in Maine, help each other”), explained that she knew three of the eight identified victims. (The names of the other 10 have not yet emerged from an investigation conducted with extreme caution by local authorities. “This is a small community with strong ties,” Ford added. She was almost convinced that Joe Walker , the restaurant manager who tried to confront the murderer with a knife, and Ron Morris, “an old friend from many years ago,” were at the bar together. The third, one of his colleagues from the package delivery company he worked for worked, died in the bowling alley.
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Those injured in the massacre were taken to the hospital in the city center, where police denied access. Three of the victims did not survive that night. About five kilometers away, in Lisbon, the road was also closed around the spot where Card hastily abandoned his car to continue his escape.
The authorities’ investigation initially focused on this area and, later in the day, also on Bowdoin, where the fugitive’s parents and siblings live, about whom more details emerged as the hours passed. His colleagues in the Army noticed worrying behavior over the summer and reported it. He spent two weeks in psychiatric treatment until he was left unsupervised. In April he opened a Twitter account (now
He was also a shooting instructor, an experience that made him a killer with fearsome skills Wednesday. Because of its low population density, outdoor lifestyle, and passion for hunting, Maine is one of the easiest states to purchase a gun. They can be carried in public, and there is no pre-screening requirement for purchasing such a rifle, even if it is a military assault rifle like the one the card uses, or if the person has a history of psychological or emotional problems . gender-based violence.
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