LEWISTON, Maine (CN) — Police have identified all 18 victims who died in the Lewiston mass-shooting and have lifted the shelter-in-place order for the surrounding area, Maine Public Safety Commissioner Mike Sauschuck announced at a news conference Friday evening.
The 18 victims ranged in age from 14 to 76, with most in their 40s and 50s.
The shelter-in-place order was rescinded with the exception that hunting will be prohibited in Lewiston and three surrounding communities. “This is not to say that the crisis is over, the emergency is done, or we can go on about our lives. We want everyone to be vigilant,” Sauschuck said. “It’s still a dangerous situation.”
He said authorities decided to lift the order after asking, "Are we doing more harm than good by keeping people away from doctors and schools?”
Sauschuck offered a note of caution for areas outside the four towns where hunting is banned.
“There are going to be people who hear gunshots, because there will be hunting, so we ask everyone to be cautious and not assume that it is related to this,” he said.
He also revealed that four plainclothes police officers were at a shooting range around the corner from the bowling alley where the first shooting occurred and responded on foot within 90 seconds — two and a half minutes before uniformed officers in patrol cars.
Divers are searching the river near where suspect Robert Card abandoned his car at a boat launch after the shootings Wednesday, and will continue to do so over the weekend with reinforcements from out of state.
“The river is a big piece of this,” Sauschuck said at a separate news conference this morning, adding that divers were looking for “bodies” as well as other types of evidence in the water and along the wooded shoreline. He didn’t explain why the river had become such a focus, but he noted that helicopters and sonar were being used.
Police are working with a local power company that owns two dams in the area to slow the current down from 8,500 to 5,500 cubic feet per second. “If we can slow that current down, and lower the amount of water in the river, that can help,” Sauschuck said.
As of this morning, police were working their way through 70 witnesses and more than 530 tips from the public, and another 100 tips came into the FBI during the day Friday. Some 200 FBI agents are on the ground in the area.
Card, a 40-year-old Army reservist with a recent history of mental health issues, is suspected of killing 18 people and wounding 13 others at the bowling alley and a restaurant several miles away. A manhunt is still underway. His motive is unclear, although his sister suggested that he might have chosen those locations because he was looking for an ex-girlfriend, ABC News reported.
Police found a note at Card’s home that may “go to mindset,” Sauschuck said. “I’m not prepared to discuss that, but when we can release it, we certainly will.”
Card, who recently reported hearing voices telling him to "shoot up" the National Guard Base in Saco, was committed to a mental health facility for two weeks this summer and then released.
He "should be considered armed and dangerous," Lewiston Police Chief David St. Pierre said.
Card’s sister-in-law, Katie O’Neill, told CNN that he was having “an acute episode” and “he is not someone who has had mental health issues for his lifetime or anything like that.”
An enormous number of schools and other public facilities in the region were closed today as the manhunt continued.
Lewiston is Maine’s second-largest city, although it has fewer than 40,000 residents. It is the home of Bates College, which postponed the inauguration of its new president, which was scheduled for today.
In 2022 Forbes magazine ranked Lewiston as one of the 10 safest cities in America. The entire state recorded only 29 homicides in all of 2022, according to the Associated Press.
President Biden used the tragedy to call for federal gun legislation.
"I urge Republican lawmakers in Congress to fulfill their duty to protect the American people," Biden said in a statement. "Work with us to pass a bill banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, to enact universal background checks, to require safe storage of guns, and end immunity from liability for gun manufacturers."
U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat who represents the Lewiston area, said in the wake of the shooting that he would reverse his previous opposition to banning assault rifles. Susan Collins, the state’s Republican U.S. senator, said it was more important to ban large capacity magazines.
Maine has few restrictions on purchases of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and allows both open and concealed carry without a permit. The assault rifle-style weapon used by Card was purchased legally this year, NBC News reported.
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