When Tom Giberti first returned to Just-In-Time Recreation, he only made it to the front door.
It was a few weeks after Christmas, and little about the Lewiston bowling alley had changed in the two months since a mass shooter opened fire in the building on Oct. 25, 2023, killing eight people.
The bullet holes were still visible, Giberti recalled. The carpets, which were soaked with blood the night of the shooting, had been ripped up.
Giberti didn’t describe what else he saw that day. Not because he couldn’t remember, but because the scene stirred up too many painful memories.
The shooter left the bowling alley that night and continued his rampage at Schemengees Bar and Grille, where he killed 10 more people. Thirteen people were also injured between both locations.
Giberti was among those injured that night. The 70-year-old, who has worked at Just-In-Time on and off for 20 years, was shot seven times, four times in the left leg and three times in the right leg.
He couldn’t make it inside the bowling alley that day after Christmas. But he kept going back, getting farther into the building each time.
“I knew even from day one I was going to be back here,” the Auburn native said.
Giberti hasn’t spoken much about what he experienced the night Robert Card II committed the worst mass shooting in Maine’s history. But Giberti is perhaps one of the most recognizable survivors from that night. He’s been hailed as a hero for saving as many as a dozen children, though he won’t call himself one. And just days ahead of the anniversary of the shooting, Giberti spoke with the Bangor Daily News to detail his recovery over the past year.
It took two or three more visits to the bowling alley before Giberti could return to the spot he’d been when the shooting began, behind the alleys and the pinsetters, though he couldn’t remember exactly how many visits. He went by himself, remembering the events of that night.
Then he decided it was time to start putting it behind him. To do so, he’s leaned heavily on a support system of fellow survivors, including Samantha and Justin Juray, the owners of Just-In-Time Recreation.
“If you weren’t here, it’s impossible to explain it to anybody. Those of us that were here are now a kindred soul,” Giberti said.
“We’ve been through something that very few people — thank God — have ever had to go through. I wouldn’t wish this on anybody, not even my worst enemy.”
Giberti wasn’t supposed to be working the night of the shooting but he decided to go to the bowling alley anyway. It was youth bowling practice that night, and Giberti’s longtime friend Bob Violette coached the league.
Giberti was in the back near the pinsetter machines when Card entered the bowling alley and began shooting. He had gone there to retrieve a screwdriver, Giberti’s nephew Will Bourgault wrote on a GoFundMe to raise money for his uncle’s recovery days after the shooting.
Giberti immediately grabbed as many as a dozen kids between the ages of 5 and 18 and ushered them through the machines and out an exit.
He was shot as he helped the last child safely out the door. Seven bullets pierced Giberti’s legs, mostly above his knees.
Giberti’s friend, Bob Violette, died in the shooting, as did Violette’s wife, Lucy.
That Giberti not only survived, but still has his legs and can walk, is nothing short of miraculous. The bullets missed all of his bones and major arteries.
“By all rights I don’t know why I have my legs,” he said. “The way I was shot, where I was shot, it could’ve easily blown my leg off. I’m just lucky the way it went.”
Giberti was rushed to Central Maine Medical Center, where he was stabilized and sent out of the emergency room so medical staff could treat more serious injuries. Once upstairs, his health declined, and he was rushed back into the ER and then an operating room.
Doctors cut open both sides of his left leg to relieve the swelling and remove some of the shrapnel. A bullet is still lodged behind Giberti’s left knee.
He was released from the hospital after only five days. He spent about a week at his brother’s home before he had to return to Central Maine Medical Center for three days because of an infection.
Word of Giberti’s heroics began to trickle out in the days following the mass shooting. Bourgault wrote about his uncle’s actions on Facebook on Oct. 26, 2023, in a post that was shared nearly 1,500 times. It was shared in a Maine-focused Reddit community with 115,000 members.
Attention has been heaped on Giberti in the year since the shooting, with people thanking him everywhere he goes. He was even recognized during a vacation this past winter in Florida.
“I’m still at a loss for words,” Giberti said. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t like being in the spotlight and I don’t feel I’m the hero or anything. It is what it is.”
When he was discharged from the hospital the second time, Giberti couldn’t put his left foot flat on the ground because of an injured leg muscle and had to use a walker. He stayed at his sister’s home until he was able to walk and care for himself. His two sons and extended family checked in on him frequently as he recovered.
He declined to see a physical therapist during his recovery. Instead, he worked on stretching his leg on his own and eventually was able to put his foot flat on the ground.
“I wanted to be back home as soon as possible,” he said.
After getting rid of the walker, Giberti was supposed to transition to a cane to help him walk. He decided “a walker is for old people,” and hobbled around for a bit until, over time, he could walk as before.
Giberti was the first Lewiston survivor to be honored by the Boston Celtics, who were public supporters of the community in the weeks after the shooting. Players wore warm-ups with “Maine” across the front in honor of the victims two days after the shooting, and held a “Lewiston Strong Night” in December.
Giberti was determined to walk out onto the court without assistance on Nov. 28, 2023.
He did so to a standing ovation just 34 days after the shooting.
“That really amazed a lot of people,” he said. “It gave people a lot of hope.”
Just-In-Time Recreation reopened May 3, just a little more than six months after the mass shooting that left 18 people dead.
Samantha and Justin Juray bought the bowling alley in May 2021 to keep it from closing. The wife and husband duo renamed the 30,000-square-foot venue, previously called Sparetime Recreation, because they were able to buy it “just in time.”
The Jurays were both at the bowling alley the night of the shooting. And in the months that followed, they poured their energy into renovating the building, bringing in new flooring, paint and scoring systems. Photos of the Lewiston-Auburn area decorate the end of each alley, as does a Hopeful sign — a replica of the one that graces Bates Mills No. 5 in downtown Lewiston.
The renovations removed the physical reminders of the mass shooting, but not the memories of the people who were killed. Instead, the victims are honored in various ways throughout the facility. Eighteen bowling pins are displayed on a wall, each painted with a victim’s name, alongside the phrase “Unity is Strength.” A table features photos of the eight people killed at Just-In-Time, while a painting of the outline of the state of Maine contains their names and a heart.
A memorial hangs on a wall at Just-in-Time Recreation as a tribute of remembrance honoring the 18 people killed last year in the mass shooting in Lewiston.
Thomas Giberti spends a moment looking at a memorial table made to honor the eight people who lost their lives at Just-In-Time Recreation last year.
At left: A memorial hangs on a wall at Just-in-Time Recreation as a tribute of remembrance honoring the 18 people killed last year in the mass shooting in Lewiston; at right: Thomas Giberti spends a moment looking at a memorial table made to honor the eight people who lost their lives at Just-In-Time Recreation last year. Credit: Linda Coan O’Kresik / BDN
The Jurays decided to reopen the bowling alley because it’s a community staple where families gather, Samantha Juray said. Some people were skeptical about the decision, but she’s seen the bowling alley continue to be a safe space for people.
Shortly after they reopened, a local kid ran away from home and rode his bicycle to Just-In-Time. Juray told him she had to call his mom, but that shows the role the business plays in the community, despite what happened.
“We had to open,” she said. “We just had to. No matter all the doubters. We just had this feeling it was going to work.”
The bowling alley stays busy, with more than 14 leagues playing on the 22 lanes of 10-pin and six lanes of candlepin.
It’s been a rollercoaster of emotions in the last year, Juray said. In the immediate aftermath she was there to help people as they processed how they were feeling.
Now, she’s taking time to focus on herself and her feelings. Talking about that night is almost harder now than it was in the months following the shooting, she said.
“It’s tough,” she said. “It’s definitely tough.”
Giberti works at the bowling alley a couple days a week and runs the candlepin league. It’s a community gathering place where people of all ages can spend time.
Before the shooting, Giberti was always at the bowling alley. People appreciate having him back and enjoy talking with him, Juray said.
“He’s always been there so it helps to make it feel the same but different, so not everything is completely different,” she said.
The community has supported Just-In-Time since day one. It’s part of the reason why Giberti wanted the bowling alley to reopen. That’s what he told Justin Juray when the couple visited him after he was released from the hospital.
“It was the first question he asked, ‘Should we reopen?’” Giberti said. “I said, ‘Absolutely. There’s no question in my mind we need to reopen. Everybody’s going to need it. We’re such a close-knit family here.’
“It was a way to get through it and know that we won and not him.”
There hasn’t been a day when Giberti hasn’t thought about the shooting.
“I’m reminded every time I get out of bed because my legs are not, and never will be, the same,” said Giberti, who has lasting muscle and nerve damage that still leaves his legs stiff, especially first thing in the morning. “I don’t know how you can forget about it when you get up in the morning and that’s the first thing you feel.”
The inside of his left leg is still numb. Doctors said the nerves may grow back in the first year, which hasn’t happened. There are times when his scars burn, for reasons unknown.
Giberti was never a jumpy person, but now unexpected loud noises, sirens and fireworks will bring him back to that night. He’s hoping that will go away with time.
His sleepless nights are slowly decreasing, but there’s still evenings he spends cuddling with Atticus, his 4-year-old Catahoula leopard dog. The moments and memories that trigger bad days are becoming fewer and farther between.
The most upsetting thing is thinking about how the shooting didn’t have to happen, Giberti said. That knowledge leaves him feeling powerless, but he tries not to dwell on it, knowing he needs to keep thinking about the future.
A commission appointed by Gov. Janet Mills investigated the shooting and found police and military failures contributed to the shooting. Giberti joined 100 survivors and victims’ family members who announced they plan to sue the U.S. Department of Defense, Army and a military hospital for failing to take action to stop Card before the rampage.
“When you think about it, you get to thinking that didn’t have to happen,” he said. “There [were] so many signs that it should’ve been stopped. It never should have happened. That’s the hard part to accept.”
