David Greenleaf was just about to throw his bowling ball when he heard a crash — what he thought might be a light bulb bursting or the ball machine breaking. Then he turned and saw a man holding a large gun with two hands. The man fired again.
At first he thought: Is this a joke? But he turned to his wife, Lisa Osgood, and said, “Get out.”
In the moments that followed, Greenleaf, 57, and Osgood, 55, narrowly escaped a gunman who would go on to kill 18 people and injure 13 others in Maine’s deadliest mass shooting and prompt a sprawling manhunt to capture a suspect who, as of Friday afternoon, remains at large.
Police have identified Robert R. Card II, 40, of Bowdoin as the suspect. He arrived at Just-In-Time Recreation on Mollison Way in Lewiston just before 7 p.m. Wednesday, authorities said, before heading to Schemengees Bar and Grille on Lincoln Street, to shoot more.
Greenleaf could see from the look on Osgood’s face that she didn’t immediately realize what was happening, he said. They had arrived just after 6 p.m. to play in the Apple Valley Golf Course’s bowling league, as they do every Wednesday during the winter. Had he not charged toward her, Osgood likely would have stood there frozen, she said. He ushered her between chairs and tables to join a pack of people headed toward the door near the back of the building, while the popping noises continued.
No one screamed or yelled, “Gun!” They just ran.
Near the door, in the crush, they fell to the ground.
“Imagine 40 people trying to get through one door,” Greenleaf said. They kept hearing, pop, then a pause. Pop. Pop. It felt like an eternity before they got to their feet and they ran out of the back of the building.
People scattered everywhere. Greenleaf and Osgood hid with two friends in the woods. About a minute or two before a fleet of police cars arrived, David saw a white Subaru pull out of the bowling alley and drive away, so casually that he had no idea the man behind the wheel would later be identified as the suspected shooter.
Again, time seemed to stand still.
“It felt like forever for the cops to get there,” Greenleaf said.
Meanwhile, Osgood wondered: Where is Trish?
Tricia Asselin had been her best friend for 36 years. In addition to bowling, they played softball together, took golf lessons together, and shared 22 Christmases with each other. Lisa and David had missed bowling last week to celebrate David’s 57th birthday in Myrtle Beach, so Asselin had gathered her in a big hug earlier that night because they had not seen each other in two weeks.
But in the blur of escaping, Osgood hadn’t seen where her friend went.
The police told everyone still at the alley to stand on the other side of the street while officers stormed the building. Greenleaf and Osgood, like many of the other bowlers, put their phones and wallets in their jackets before starting their game, and didn’t grab their coats as they fled for the door, so they borrowed phones later to let their kids know they were all right. Nearly two days later, they are still waiting to get their belongings back.
“It was the scariest hour of my life not knowing,” said 26-year-old Ally Osgood, Lisa’s daughter and David’s stepdaughter, a respiratory therapist who spent the evening on lockdown at Midcoast Hospital in Brunswick.
The couple waited about three hours in the cold, they said, feeling exposed on the side of the road. Every time a car drove by, David placed himself in front of Lisa. Those who did have phones were hearing all kinds of things on social media and the news — that there were multiple shooters, that a coordinated attack had targeted Lewiston, that gunmen had also descended on Da Vinci’s, Walmart, Margarita’s and Schemengees, where the couple liked to play cornhole on Tuesday nights. The numbers differed, but it seemed like a lot of people were dead.
First responders eventually took them to the Lewiston Armory where they told police what they saw. When David mentioned the Subaru, an officer asked him to make a written statement.
In the coming days, he would stew over that moment. If only he had only known who was driving the car or had been able to see through its darkened windows. Could he have stopped it before it drove away?
“I didn’t know it was him, or I would’ve,” he said Friday, his eyes welling with tears. “I still blame myself a little, because maybe we could have got him before he got to Schemengees.”
An ambulance gave them a ride home sometime after midnight. Greenleaf armed himself with his 9 mm pistol, and they searched all the closets in their house, even though, by then, they discovered police were only searching for one person, Card, and in an area far from their home in Lewiston. They recognized him, they realized. He also played cornhole.
The events of that night still feel surreal. Mass shootings aren’t supposed to happen in quiet places like Lewiston, and Greenleaf and Osgood worry they will never feel safe anywhere if they can’t feel safe here.
It took David until 4 a.m. to fall asleep after they got home from the Armory, but Lisa couldn’t.
Sometime after the shooting, in the whirl of rumors and news updates and information, she had believed Asselin had made it safely out, only to learn that she had not. Asselin’s mother, Alicia Lachance, told Rolling Stone that her daughter had been shot to death at the bowling alley trying to call law enforcement. That Wednesday had also been youth night, and she wanted to protect the children.
“Trish was a kindhearted, giving person. She always puts everybody else in front of her,” Osgood said. She had been in such a good mood that night, she said. She had been happy that night to see everyone.
Please contact [email protected] or call or text 207-990-8280 if you know people killed or injured in the Lewiston shootings.
