2023 Lewiston shootings

2023 Lewiston shootings
On October 25, 2023, a gunman killed 18 people and injured 13 others during a shooting spree at two locations in Lewiston, Maine, United States. The first mass shooting was at the Just-in-Time Recreation bowling alley, during a youth league event, and the second occurred minutes later at the Schemengees Bar & Grille Restaurant.
The Androscoggin County Sheriff's Office released a photograph of the suspect, 40-year-old Robert Card, and an intensive manhunt commenced. An arrest warrant was issued, citing eight counts of murder. On October 27, he was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in a tractor trailer near a recycling center in Lisbon, where he had recently worked.
The shooting is the tenth-deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, as well as the deadliest of 2023 and the deadliest in the history of Maine.
Events
Shootings
The shootings occurred on October 25, 2023, beginning at Just-In-Time Recreation, a Lewiston bowling alley, during a youth league event. The shooter used a semi-automatic rifle chambered in .308 Winchester and equipped with an extended magazine and optic. Police received the first emergency calls at 6:56p.m. EDT. Plainclothes officers using a nearby shooting range also heard the gunshots and responded. The first responding officers arrived at the scene within four minutes of the first call. Seven people were killed at this location.
Shortly after, at 7:08, a second shooting was reported at Schemengees Bar & Grille Restaurant, south of Just-In-Time. Officers arrived at the scene two minutes later. Eight people were killed at this location, seven of them inside the building and the eighth outside. Another three victims died later in a hospital.
At 8:06, the Androscoggin County Sheriff's Office and Maine State Police alerted residents of an active shooter. The sheriff's office also released images of Card inside the bowling alley with a "high-powered assault-style rifle", as well as an image of his 2013 Subaru Outback, warning residents that the shooter was "armed and dangerous".
The Central Maine Medical Center coordinated with local area hospitals to take in victims. Several were taken to the Maine Medical Center in Portland, the largest hospital in the state.
Manhunt
Three hours after the shooting, police in Lisbon, located about southeast of Lewiston, found Card's abandoned vehicle at a boat launch along the Androscoggin River. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives provided assistance to local authorities.
On October 26, the Maine State Police and Governor Janet Mills confirmed the number of victims and announced that an arrest warrant was issued for the suspect, who was charged with eight counts of murder. Police surrounded a house in Bowdoin while executing a search warrant.
On October 27, Michael Sauschuck, the Maine public safety commissioner, said that police were using dive teams and sonar remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) to search for underwater activity near where Card's vehicle was found in Lisbon. Sauschuck said they did not definitively know the means of escape. That same day, the shelter-in-place order in Lewiston was rescinded, but hunting restrictions in Bowdoin, Lewiston, Lisbon, and Monmouth were imposed.
On the evening of October 27, Card was found dead near his former place of employment, a recycling center close to the Androscoggin River in Lisbon. The recycling center had been searched the night before, but his body was found in a box truck on part of the land that had not previously been searched. Card's cause of death was an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. The hunting restrictions that had been put in place were subsequently removed.
Victims
Eighteen people were killed and thirteen others were injured. Seven were killed at Just-In-Time Recreation, eight were killed at Schemengees Bar & Grille Restaurant, and three died in a hospital. Four of those killed in the restaurant were deaf, having been participating in a cornhole tournament for the deaf community. Ranging in age from 14 to 76, the dead were all identified on October 27.
Perpetrator
Robert Russell Card II (April 4, 1983 – October 27, 2023) was a longtime resident of Bowdoin, Maine. He was identified by the police on October 25, initially as a person of interest, and later designated as a suspect the next day. He was a sergeant first class in the United States Army Reserve and enlisted in December 2002. An Army spokesperson confirmed that Card was a member of the reserves, but had no active deployments.
Card was formerly a student at Bowdoin Central School and later Mount Ararat High School in nearby Topsham. After graduating in 2001, he studied engineering at the University of Maine from 2001 to 2004, but did not complete his education. His only recorded interactions with law enforcement prior to 2023 were a 2007 DUI arrest, to which he pleaded guilty, and two speeding charges in 2001 and 2002.
In July 2023, service members who were training alongside Card at West Point reported that he was behaving erratically and requested that law enforcement intervene. Card had complained of hearing voices and threatened to "shoot up" a military base in Saco. The New York State Police responded to the report and transported him to the Keller Army Community Hospital at the academy, where he was committed for two weeks for medical evaluation.
Army spokesperson Bryce Dubee said Card returned home August 3, 2023, where it was ruled that he could “not have a weapon, handle ammunition or participate in live-fire activity,” and was considered “non-deployable.”
Card's sister-in-law informed NBC News that he had started hearing voices around the time he was fitted for hearing aids. She mentioned that he "was picking up voices that he had never heard. His mind was twisting them around. He was humiliated by the things that he thought were being said."
Aftermath
Following the shootings, a shelter-in-place order was implemented in Lewiston, and schools were placed on lockdown. Auburn issued its own shelter-in-place order and an additional order for businesses to lock down. Classes at Central Maine Community College, schools in the Lewiston Public Schools district, and Bates College were canceled on October 26, as well as several school districts within a 50-mile radius. The shelter-in-place advisory was extended to Bowdoin on October 26. Bates College also postponed its presidential inauguration, previously scheduled for October 27, until further notice. Additionally, extra security measures were taken along the Canada–U.S. border following an "armed and dangerous" alert issued by the Canada Border Services Agency.
Shortly after the shooting, there was an increase in individuals within the state looking to purchase a weapon, with one gun store allegedly having a line over an hour long. A gun store owner told reporters that he had done more business the day after the shooting than he had in the prior month, and that although deer season was scheduled to start the Saturday after the shooting, he believed most of the sales were safety related.
Disinformation
According to Wired, right after the shooting, social media platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter were flooded with disinformation about Card. This included false claims from verified premium Twitter accounts that he had been arrested and was no longer at large, or stating inaccurately, based on an arrest for someone else of the same name, that he was arrested in 2016 for possessing and disseminating sexually explicit materials. Some accounts claimed he voted for former U.S. president Barack Obama, or was a supporter of Hamas.
Reactions
Local and state
Mayor Carl Sheline said that he was "heartbroken" for Lewiston. The mayor of Auburn, Lewiston's twin city, said, "We will get this situation settled." Maine Governor Janet Mills urged residents to follow law enforcement instructions. The former head of the Maine Center for Disease Control and the now deputy director of the CDC, Dr. Nirav Shah, offered his condolences for one of the victims, Joshua Seal who had been employed under Dr. Shah as a American Sign Language interpreter during the COVID-19 pandemic height. Similar condolences were offered by the director of the Maine Education Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Karen Hopkins, as three of the deceased were graduates of the center.
Federal
U.S. Senator Angus King of Maine wrote on Twitter that he was "deeply sad". Fellow Maine Senator Susan Collins remarked, "This is the darkest day in Maine history in my lifetime." Both senators refused to support an assault weapons ban. Jared Golden—who represents Lewiston—and Chellie Pingree, both U.S. Representatives from Maine, released statements expressing shock at the events. Golden further announced his support for an assault weapons ban, reversing his previous opposition to gun control measures, asking for "forgiveness" from the community and victims' families for his previous opposition. On October 25, President Joe Biden made calls to several Maine lawmakers to offer full federal support. On October 26, he ordered that U.S. flags be lowered to half-staff for five days as "a mark of respect for the victims of the senseless acts of violence perpetrated in Lewiston, Maine". In a later statement, Biden urged lawmakers to impose an assault weapons ban and introduce more gun laws, saying that it is "not normal, and we cannot accept it" and that current safety actions are "simply not enough".
See also
2023 Bowdoin–Yarmouth shootings, shootings that occurred in Maine in April 2023
List of mass shootings in the United States in 2023
Notes
References
2023 in Maine
2023 mass shootings in the United States
2023 murders in the United States
Attacks on buildings and structures in 2023
Attacks on restaurants in North America
Deaths by firearm in Maine
2023 shootings
Mass murder in 2023
Mass shootings in Maine
Mass shootings in the United States
Murder in Maine
Murder–suicides in Maine
October 2023 crimes in the United States
Spree shootings in the United States