The detention, which has been in place for nearly 48 hours, has been lifted in the community of Lewiston, Maine, as the manhunt continues, American authorities announced during a news conference Friday evening.
• Also read: A “suicide note” was found in the suspect’s home
• Also read: First minor victim identified in Lewiston shooting
• Also read: Robert Card: The authorities could face major challenges in their search
Two days after the deadliest murder of the year in the United States, convoys of police cars drive past at top speed, sirens blaring. Each time, the trapped residents wonder if the shooter and his semi-automatic rifle have finally been found.
Police combed several locations on Friday. Investigative work continued not only in the bowling alley and bar-restaurant where 40-year-old Robert Card is suspected of killing 18 people, but also in rural or wooded areas and around a boat ramp. Water on the Androscoggin River.
Here, along a railway line overlooking the waterway, agents in bulletproof vests and rifles on their shoulders disappear into the trees. Others explore the murky waters using sonar controlled from shore.
There, in Lisbon, a city very close to Lewiston, the police are on duty in a residential area on the edge of a forest. Blair, a Canadian who did not give his last name, told the press that she cordoned off an area in the middle of the houses after an explosion was reported to her.
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He himself says that he heard the sharp noise half an hour earlier and is almost certain that it was a gunshot. “I have a gun and it definitely sounded like a gunshot,” he explains.
Authorities said during a news conference Friday morning that they had received more than 530 “tips and information.” They encouraged people to continue to come forward and send in any video they have because a crucial clue could be found in a citizen’s seemingly innocuous recording, they said.
AFP
There is now speculation. How did the murderer manage to disappear into thin air? Did he escape on a jet ski after abandoning his car? Is he somewhere in the forest? Did he end his life?
Many in the region “think he is dead,” Cheryl Haggerty told AFP.
AFP
This real estate agent’s house is located above one of the properties being investigated by the police. She comes to watch the agents – and the swarm of journalists who follow them, hoping to film the moment of breakthrough – wearing a bright pink top and a large black belt from which hangs a Glock pistol.
In Maine, a state of forests and hunters, many families have guns in their homes. This is the case with Cheryl.
“I feel sorry for the people who are not armed,” she said.
AFP
“What can they do when they hear the door opening?” she wonders. Let’s imagine that the killer “shoots at the door and breaks in, just like in Israel,” she adds, referring to the Hamas attack in early October, particularly on kibbutzim.
“If you have a gun, at least you hear the door, you’re awake, you can be ready” to fight back, she argues. “And you’ll have a good chance” of getting out of there.
As they wait for the suspect to one day be found dead or alive, thousands of residents remain locked in their homes for now, while police helicopters and drones buzz in the sky.
AFP