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Here’s what you need to know as we continue to make sense of the tragedy in Lewiston.
Bowling alley witness describes ‘relaxed and methodical’ shooter
“I did not have a sense he had any set targets,” Danielle Grondin said Sunday evening. “My sense was he saw someone moving and he shot.”
After Maine’s deadliest mass shooting, Lewiston begins the long healing process
The man accused of carrying out the deadliest act of violence in recent Maine history is dead. Robert R. Card II, 40, of Bowdoin was found dead in Lisbon of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. His body was found by a recycling center where he used to work, about a mile away from where his white Subaru was found abandoned Wednesday night.
Now the process of healing has begun for the former milltown on the Androscoggin River after the deaths of 18 people last week. Another 13 were wounded.
Remembering the victims: The first vigils were held over the weekend — Lewiston, Bangor and other communities — and the victims were remembered by family, friends and the community. Police on Friday publicly identified all 18 killed.
— Among those killed was Joseph Lawrence Walker, a bar manager Schemengees Bar and Grille Restaurant, who heroically attempted to stop the gunman, according to his father, Auburn City Councilor Leroy Walker.
“The heart doesn’t stop bleeding,” the elder Walker told us while attending a Halloween event in Auburn’s Anniversary Park. “It just doesn’t stop. The tears slow down because you do it [cry] so much, and after a while they’re just not there to come out anymore.”
— Josh Seal, 36, would always find time to “move heaven and earth for his family” while also caring greatly for the deaf community, according to his wife Elizabeth Seal. Josh Seal and three other deaf victims — Billy Brackett, 48; Steve Vozzella, 45; and Bryan MacFarlane, 41 — died while playing in their weekly cornhole league at Schemengees.
“If you knew Josh, you were fortunate,” Elizabeth Seal told us. “You were a lucky person.”
— Arthur Strout was out for a night of playing pool at Schemengees with his father, Arthur Barnard. It was a favorite father-son activity over the years. But when Barnard was ready to leave, his son wasn’t quite ready to go.
“He said, ‘Dad, I just want to play my friend a couple more games of pool,’” Barnard said at a Saturday night vigil in Lewiston’s Kennedy Park. “And I left.”
— Keri Brooks is trying to make sense of her world in the wake of the shootings at Schemengees and nearby Just-In-Time Recreation, a bowling alley, and the loss of her brother Bryan MacFarlane.
“I know we will be OK, but we are forever changed,” Brooks told us.
— Peyton Brewer-Ross had just celebrated his daughter Elle’s birthday earlier this month. He was killed playing cornhole with friends at Schemengees, and now the little girl is heartbreakingly asking where her daddy is and the family has few answers to give, according to his brother Ralph Brewer.
“Peyton and Elle, those two were a pair,” Brewer told us. “She is a total daddy’s girl — the first word that ever came out of her mouth was ‘daddy.’”
As of Sunday morning, five people wounded in the shootings remained hospitalized, including one at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and three in critical condition at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston.
— Among those still recovering over the weekend was Thomas Giberti, a manager at Just-In-Time who is being hailed as a hero for putting himself between the gunman and a group of young bowlers he ushered out of the building. Giberti was shot seven times.
“I said, ‘That’s what heroes do,’” his nephew Will Bourgault told us. “His actions are what helped save those kids.”
Questions remain about the police response: The first police arrived at Just-In-Time, where eight people were killed, 90 seconds after the shooting started. But Card was gone and likely on his way to Schemengees, about 11 minutes away. Once the shooting started there, it took police only five minutes to respond to the first 911 call. Still, Card was gone.
Tens of thousands of Mainers were placed under shelter-in-place orders for days as police searched for Card. With most businesses closed down, many faced the prospect of running out of food. (Those shelter-in-place orders were lifted by Friday afternoon, nearly two days later.)
During press conferences, it was clear authorities were grappling with a sprawling and difficult search for Card, with hundreds of officers from local, county, state and federal agencies searching as far north as Monmouth and south as Bowdoin for the suspect. The fact that Maine is a large but sparsely populated state with rough terrain means there are plenty of places to hide and evade police.
Card, a U.S. Army reservist, was treated at a mental health facility for two weeks over the summer after began behaving erratically while with his unit at West Point in New York. He also threatened violence at a base.
Two police chiefs told the Associated Press that law enforcement had been warned about Card just last month, but officers couldn’t locate him around the base where he trained nor his property in Sagadahoc County.
There are many unanswered questions about what the military, police, mental health professionals and relatives could have done to prevent the massacre.
The political implications: While the healing process begins for many and others look to return to normal, some are still looking to understand how this violence happened and what can be done to prevent it from happening here again.
Maine has lax gun laws, which makes it stand out among other more liberal states. Some figures, such as U.S. Rep. Jared Golden and President Joe Biden, have called for a political response. Golden, whose hometown is Lewiston, is now backing an assault weapons ban, saying last week he was wrong to oppose such measures.
That has drawn a swift rebuke from his potential Republican challengers in next year’s midterm elections.
The massacres are likely to dominate debate during the upcoming session of the Legislature. Rep. Michel Lajoie, a Lewiston Democrat and former fire chief who has leaned more conservative on issues including abortion, said he thinks banning assault-style weapons like AR-15-style rifles will be a priority for the Legislature.
Rep. David Boyer, R-Poland, has called for an “audit,” arguing existing laws failed to prevent the massacres and that the answer isn’t necessarily passing new legislation.
The question of whether Maine’s yellow flag law, enacted in 2020, could have prevented Wednesday’s rampage has been raised by politicians, including U.S. Sen. Susan Collins. But the New York events would never have triggered the law because Card was put into protective custody out of state and was evaluated out of state.
Card wasn’t involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, so he still was able to legally buy firearms. Authorities seized multiple guns during their search for Card, but haven’t released details about how many they recovered and their make or model.
