The shootings in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday that killed 18 and wounded several others shook the country, becoming the deadliest mass shooting in the US this year.
An immediate lockdown went into effect for residents of Lewiston as the shooter, who had just murdered nearly two dozen people in a bowling alley and restaurant, was – and still is – on the loose. Schools were closed and stores and businesses were shuttered.
“There is an active shooter situation in the city of Lewiston,” Maine state police said on Facebook just after 8pm. Police told residents to stay off the roads, shelter in place and stay inside their homes with the doors locked.
Muhummad Akhtar, who works at Lewiston Variety, said it felt tense in the store on Friday afternoon.
“Everyone comes to me kind of scared,” Akhtar said. “Now, people are running out of their home supplies. When they come here, they’re buying a lot of stuff because they think this thing might linger on for maybe a week.”
On Wednesday evening, Akhtar was on the way back from a parent-teacher conference at his children’s school with his family when they decided to go bowling – the very moment the shooter had entered the building. At the last minute, Akhtar’s wife changed her mind and the family went home instead.
“We pulled out just five minutes before the incident,” Akhtar said.
Akhtar said he didn’t know any of the victims personally but recognized one man as a frequent customer.
“He used to come here on a regular basis,” he said. “We have been living in Maine for the last six, seven years. We never heard anything like that before. It was surprising for us – that why is this happening here? Everyone was scared. We were just watching the TV and was praying for those people who were inside.”
As residents waited in fear under a lockdown and subsequent shelter-in-place warnings, some took to social media to share their experiences in real time.
Sheena Hall, a woman who posted a video on TikTok, detailed her emotional experience in lockdown as she anxiously awaited updates on the situation. Hall said her mother-in-law belonged to a bowling league that frequented the bowling alley where the shooting took place.
“My mother-in-law has lost three friends,” Hall said in the video. “All the stores are closed. All the schools are closed. And we have heavy police presence right now, hoping to find this guy – this monster.”
Hall found out about the shooting while picking her son up from the junior fire station. After multiple attempts to reach her mother-in-law, Hall finally got through. Hall said she was “grateful” her mother-in-law had not been at the bowling alley.
Another user, @beesandbabs, posted a video with images of the town under lockdown. It said “not a soul in sight”.
Susan Murphy, who was working in a McDonald’s at the time of the shootings, called the night in lockdown the scariest night of her life, in a video she uploaded.
“We basically went into the back room to hide,” she said. “It was terrifying. We spent two and a half to three hours [hiding] and then we finally got the OK that we could leave the store so we all left as quickly as we could, got in our cars and headed home.”
Although Murphy said she and her co-workers made it home, she still didn’t feel entirely safe.
“Something needs to be done because this is just getting out of control,” she said. “It’s just really scary having constant threats of gun violence.”
