Lockdown lifted due to Maine massacre and all 18 victims named

Authorities on Friday afternoon completed the task of identifying the 18 dead victims of the Maine mass shooting. Nearly all are residents of Lewiston, the scene of the mass shooting, and range in age from 14 to 76. It took nearly two days for that moment to arrive, almost 48 hours after reservist Robert Card, 40, burst into the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley shortly before 7 p.m. Wednesday and opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle, then drove through the quiet town to the Schemengees restaurant before fleeing.

The suspect’s body has now been found, and precautionary lockdowns in the towns in the area have since been lifted. Mike Sauschuck of the Maine Department of Public Safety ended that confinement during a press conference at the Lewiston Town Hall this afternoon. Life, he said, can return to the towns of Lewiston, Lisbon, where the suspect was last seen and where the search was concentrated on the Androscoggin River, Bowdoyn, site of the suspect’s last residence, and Monmouth, where some of his family members live.

The only thing that remained prohibited was hunting, and it makes sense: if the hundreds of local, county, state and federal agents deployed are still looking for a dangerous, heavily armed man, best to avoid gunfire that might lead neighbors to call the police.

As of Friday, only eight of the 18 killed had been identified: seven (six men and one woman) died in the bowling alley, and eight men died in the restaurant. Three succumbed to their injuries in the hospital that night. The authorities had refused to give or confirm any names, out of respect for the families, although the stories of those first eight have been emerging in the media in recent days.

Until Friday, there was no information about their ages either. Since the mass shooting occurred, that was one of the insistent questions asked by reporters, who sought to clear a terrible unknown sown by the first information, which said that a children’s tournament was being held at the bowling alley on Wednesday.

Among the victims are a sign language interpreter, Joshua Seal, 36, known in Maine because he worked with some of the most prominent local politicians and became a familiar presence in homes in the northeastern Maine state during the pandemic; Schmengees manager Joe Walker, 57, who confronted the attacker with a knife; or Bill Young, 44, and one of his three sons, Aaron, 14. Both were bowling when Card walked in with his gun, which he bought sometime this year despite having been placed on watch over the summer for a mental health issue.

Michael Deslauriers II (51) also died there. His father told a local radio station that he and a friend had taken their wives and several children to safety before he died. The man also said that both “heroes” were killed shortly thereafter.

Seal, meanwhile, was in the restaurant with three other deaf people, Bryan MacFarlane (41), Billy Brackett (48) and Steve Vozzella (45). They were engaged in a tournament of cornhole, a local board game. Also at the Schmengees was Arthur Strout, who at 42 was a father of five, enjoying himself at one of the pool tables, another of the attractions that made the now-closed venue an institution for leisure in Lewiston.

The list is completed by the septuagenarian couple Robert and Lucille Violette, Tricia Asselin (53), a regular customer and part-time employee of the bowling alley, where Thomas Ryan Conrad (34) and Jason Adam Walker (51), Peyton Brewer Ross, who had just become a father at the age of 40, Keith Mcneir, 64, whose family released a photo of him sailing, and Ron Morin (55) and Maxx A. Hathaway (35), killed at the restaurant, also died.

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