Eighteen people were killed, and 13 were wounded when a man with a rifle attacked patrons at a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston in the US state of Maine on Thursday.
“I am profoundly saddened to stand before you today to report that 18 people lost their lives and 13 people injured in last night’s attacks,” State Governor Janet Mills said, as police kept searching for the gunman in the Wednesday night rampage at a bowling alley and a bar.
Police fanned out across southern Maine searching for a person of interest, Robert R Card, a US 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.
Maine State Police found a white SUV they believe Card drove to Lisbon, about 11km to the southeast, and urged people to remain indoors in Lewiston and Lisbon.
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, 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.
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.
Police said the shooting began shortly before 7pm local time at the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley. A short time later, they received reports of a shooting at Schemengees Bar & Grille Restaurant, about 5km away.
Jessica Karcher said one of the wounded was her son Justin Karcher, who was shot in the spine and kidneys and was in surgery. According to Lewiston’s Sun Journal newspaper, he witnessed his father, Jean Karcher, being shot and killed in 2019 during an altercation in a Walmart parking lot.
Lewiston is a former textile hub about 56km north of Maine’s largest city, Portland, and home to about 38,000 people.
