Lewiston ghost town searches for Maine massacre perpetrator: ‘Mourning won’t begin until we find him’

The quiet town of Lewiston joined the list of American place names — from Uvalde to Parkland, from Columbine to Sandy Hook — forever associated with the tragic epidemic of gun violence on Wednesday night. A military reservist named Robert Card, a 40-year-old shooting instructor with a history of mental health problems, killed at least 18 people in two mass shootings, one at a bowling alley where a children’s tournament was being held and the other at a popular restaurant with pool tables and darts. The attacks also left 13 people wounded.

With about 40,000 inhabitants, Lewiston is the second largest city in Maine, a sparsely populated state in the northeast of the country. On Thursday, it woke up, along with much of Androscoggin County, turned into a ghost town. The killer, described at a morning press conference at City Hall by Democratic Governor Janet Mills as “armed and very dangerous,” went on the run after the killing, and almost 24 hours later there was still no sign of him.

Police urged (but did not order) residents to stay indoors and to exercise extreme caution. The warning was extended in the afternoon to the southern part of neighboring Sagadahoc County. The streets of the towns where the events took place, Lewiston and Lisbon, looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie with a handful of underpaid extras: a mix of homeless people, stripped-down drug addicts and rough-looking men, hardly eager to do what others tell them to. Guys like Al, who tossed out a theory about Card’s whereabouts while refueling his truck. “He’s a long way from here, lost in a forest. I’m not afraid of him; I’m armed, too.”

Journalists from all over the country gathered in the early morning at the epicenters of the tragedy, where access was blocked by heavily armed police. From the Spare Time Recreation bowling alley, where Card burst in shortly before 7 p.m. armed with a military-style rifle equipped with a scope and killed seven people, to the Schemenggees Bar & Grille, where he killed eight others. Dozens of agents from various local, state and federal agencies, including 80 FBI agents, were deployed throughout a vast wooded area, already tinged with autumn colors, a serious matter in this part of the world, where finding someone with the resources to escape seemed an almost impossible mission. Meanwhile, the Coast Guard patrolled the Kennebec River.

Between the two killing sites, Card drove through streets of single-family homes in a white SUV once he had finished the first part of his mission. About four miles and a 10-minute drive separate the locations. Bowling alley neighbor Melissa Holmes was picking up one of her three children from a nearby gym when it all happened. She didn’t hear the shots. “It could have been any one of them,” she recalled while still in shock outside her home on a rundown residential street. “I can’t believe this is happening here; you always watch on TV when it happens somewhere else, and you pray for those people; now we need people to pray for us. And that they find this bastard as soon as possible so we can begin our collective mourning.”

Near Schemengees, Laurie Ford, who opened her home so that reporters and police could use the bathroom (“this is what we do in Maine, we help each other”), explained that she knew three of the eight identified victims (the names of the other 10 have yet to emerge from an investigation conducted with extreme precaution by local authorities). “This is a small community with strong ties,” Ford added. She was almost convinced that Joe Walker, manager of the restaurant, who tried to confront the killer with a knife, and Ron Morris, “an old friend from many years ago,” were at the bar together. William Brackett, one of her co-workers at the package delivery company where she works, died at the bowling alley.

The wounded from the massacre were taken to the hospital in the center of the city, to which the police blocked access. Three of the victims did not survive the night. About five kilometers from there, in Lisbon, the road was also cut off around the place where Card left his car in a hurry to continue his escape.

The authorities’ investigations initially focused on that area and, as the day progressed, also on Bowdoin, where the fugitive’s parents and siblings live, and more details became known as the hours went by. His colleagues in the Army began to notice disturbing behavior in the summer, which they reported. He spent two weeks in psychiatric treatment, until he was left unsupervised. He had opened a Twitter account (now X) in April, in which he showed sympathy for some prominent members of the American right, from Congressman Kevin McCarthy to Canadian essayist Jordan B. Peterson.

On top of that, he was a shooting instructor, an experience that turned him into a deadly killer with a dreaded dexterity on Wednesday. With its low population density, outdoorsy lifestyle and passion for hunting, Maine is one of the easiest states in which to buy a gun. They can be carried in public and there is no pre-screening for someone to buy one, even if it’s a military-style assault rifle like the one Card used, or if that person has a history of mental health issues or gender-based violence.

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