Maine governor says 18 killed in shooting attacks at bar, bowling alley

Reuters:

LEWISTON, Maine, Oct 26 – Maine Governor Janet Mills said on Thursday that 18 people were killed and 13 were wounded when a man with a rifle attacked patrons at a bowling alley and a bar in the city of Lewiston the previous night.

Police fanned out across southern Maine searching for a person of interest, Robert R. Card, a U.S. Army reservist who law enforcement 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.

Public school districts in the area canceled classes on Thursday and police urged residents to stay indoors.

“This is a dark day for Maine,” Governor 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 7 miles (11 km) to the southeast, and urged people to remain indoors in both Lewiston and Lisbon. Early Thursday, police also told residents in the town of Bowdoin, about 12 miles east of Lewiston, to shelter in place. Card lives in Bowdoin, according to public records.

There was an eerie quiet in Lewiston and Lisbon on Thursday morning, 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 U.S. 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 Center, a unit of Maine State Police. Reuters could not confirm the details reported in the bulletin.

The U.S. 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.

Police said the shooting began shortly before 7 p.m. at the the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley. A short time later, they received reports of a shooting at Schemengees Bar & Grille Restaurant, about three miles (5 km) away.

“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.”