Halloween decorations for spooky season were up in the Maine city of Lewiston but the community’s streets were mostly quiet on Thursday, a day after a gunman killed 18 people at a local bowling alley and nearby bar in an act of horror that was all too real.
Police roadblocks prevented access to some areas of the town – part of a partial lockdown announced after the 40-year-old murder suspect, Robert Card, fled the scene, leaving his car several miles away near a boat dock. He is still on the run as hundreds of police search for him.
At J&H Variety on the edge of town, one of the few stores open, local residents all seemed to know someone who had been killed or injured. Lewiston is the sort of small town where most people know most people – amplifying the awfulness of what had taken place mere hours previously.
“It’s scary. This is a tight-knit community,” said Heather Thurlow. “We’re a little on edge because this kind of thing doesn’t happen round here. It was frightening. There were 50 cop cars driving up and down.”
With more than 350 law enforcement personnel involved in the search for Card, an alert was issued at 2pm on Thursday warning residents of nearby Sagadahoc county to stay inside and lock their doors – suggesting that police may be closing in on the army veteran.
That was less than 19 hours after police began receiving multiple reports of an active shooter at a bowling alley, and then at Schemengees Bar and Grille Restaurant on Lincoln Street.
An hour after the violence began, at 8.06pm, police released a photo of the suspect to the media and by 9.30pm had identified him as Robert Card of Bowdoin, Maine.
Thirty minutes later they found his white Subaru at the Pejepscot boat launch in Lisbon. The suspect had vanished. For some residents it would be the first time they locked their doors.
At J&H Variety, Hunter Karcher, 12, said his brother Justin, 22, had been shot four times and is currently in the ICU. “They won’t tell us anything except that he got shot four times,” Karcher said.
A property manager who gave his name as Bill said the community around Lewiston was self-sufficient, showing a rifle in the back of his jeep.
“This a community takes care of itself,” he said. “This is a second amendment community, and this shooting is not a firearms issue – it’s a mental health issue.” But, he said: “It’s unreal and a little overwhelming.”
With the suspect still at large, Bill added that, as of Thursday morning, “most people are carrying [guns] now”.
Card is considered armed and dangerous, and police have urged locals to be vigilant and not to approach him.
Rumors about Card are rife – that he’s a survivalist, ex-Special Forces, had recently lost his job. None seem to be true.
Card’s family said on Wednesday evening, when the shootings occurred, that they had been helping law enforcement. Relatives have said that in recent months the veteran believed he was hearing people say things.
“I have known Rob my whole life. He is quiet but the most loving, hardworking and kind person that I know. But in the past year, he had an acute episode of mental health,” his sister-in-law Katie O’Neil told the Daily Beast.
Residents of Lewiston remained terrified, and mystified as to where Card might be.
“It’s been sketchy, but if he’s still in the area he’ll get purged out,” Bill said, theorizing that Card may have gone inland from the coast, or taken off along the rocky coastline.
Many gave names of those killed, which have not been formally released. Residents said the dead include a delivery employee and a woman who worked at the bowling alley.
Tim Whitney, 23, said his grandmother’s husband, Alan Nickerson, had been shot in the pelvis. There was a sliver of good news on a day when Lewiston joined a long list of US communities traumatized by mass shootings.
“He’s doing good in the hospital,” Whitney said.
