LEWISTON, Maine (CN) — Police divers are searching the river near where Lewiston mass shooting suspect Robert Card abandoned his car at a boat launch, as police work their way through 70 witnesses and more than 530 tips from the public, Maine Public Safety Commissioner Mike Sauschuck said at a news conference Friday.
“The river is a big piece of this,” Sauschuck said, 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 in the river search.
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, Sauschuck said. “If we can slow that current down, and lower the amount of water in the river, that can help.”
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 a restaurant and a bowling alley 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.”
Police have identified only 8 of the 18 people who died, according to Sauschuck. Shelter-in-place orders remain active for Lewiston and three surrounding areas, although they’re being continually evaluated.
“That’s an ongoing conversation, does it make sense, can we relax those,” Sauschuck said, noting that, as with Covid-19, lockdowns “can have some negative impacts on families, schools and businesses.”
Sauschuck asked for patience. On TV, “everything we watch, it’s all taken care of in an hour,” he said. But it will take police days to process the two crime scenes as well as to obtain warrants to search phones, computers and video.
He added, “Every minute that this goes on, we’re more and more concerned, because what’s the next thing that’s going to happen?”
Six men and one woman were killed at the bowling alley about 7 p.m. Wednesday. Another eight men were killed about 15 minutes later at the restaurant. Three people later died in a hospital of gunshot wounds.
“This is a dark day for Maine,” said Governor Janet Mills, who appeared emotional and exhausted at a separate news conference yesterday.
Card recently reported hearing voices telling him to "shoot up" the National Guard Base in Saco, Maine. He was committed to a mental health facility for two weeks this summer and then released.
He "should be considered armed and dangerous," said Lewiston Police Chief David St. Pierre.
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 are still closed as the manhunt continues.
Lewiston is Maine’s second-largest city, although it has fewer than 40,000 residents, and is the home of Bates College. Bates postponed the inauguration of its new president, which was scheduled for today.
In 2022 Lewiston was ranked as one of the 10 safest cities in America by Forbes magazine. 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, according to NBC News.
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