Lewiston : Heavily armed police surrounded a home Thursday as they searched for a U.S. Army reservist who authorities say killed 18 people and wounded 13 in a mass shooting at a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston, Maine. You need to come outside now with nothing in your hands. Your hands in the air, police shouted through a megaphone outside the home owned by suspect Robert Card's relative near the town of Bowdoin.
They called on Card and anyone in the home to come out into the driveway. Hundreds of law enforcement agents, including dozens of FBI agents, have been hunting for Card, a 40-year-old reservist with a history of mental health issues, since Wednesday night's shootings at a bowling alley and a bar that sent panicked patrons scrambling under tables and behind bowling pins and gripped the entire state of Maine in fear.
Schools, doctor's offices and grocery stores closed and people stayed behind locked doors in cities as far away as 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the scenes of Wednesday night's shootings in Lewiston. President Joe Biden ordered all U.S. flags to be flown at half-staff as condolences poured in from around the nation and at home, including from Maine native and author Stephen King, who called it madness. The attacks stunned a state of only 1.3 million people that has one of the country's lowest homicide rates: 29 killings in all of 2022.
Card is considered armed and dangerous and should not be approached, authorities said at a news conference. Card underwent a mental health evaluation in mid-July after he began acting erratically while with his reserve regiment, a U.S. official told The Associated Press.
Earlier, police had not said if they have seen Card since the shootings at Schemengees Bar and Grille and at Just-In-Time Recreation, a bowling alley about 4 miles (6 kilometers) away. The Androscoggin County Sheriff's Office released two photos of the suspect walking into the bowling alley with a rifle raised to his shoulder.
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Investigators also haven't said what weapon or weapons Card used in the shootings or how he obtained them. Several FBI agents and other heavily armed officers gathered Thursday afternoon off a road where several relatives of Card lived near Bowdoin. A military-style vehicle and a white van arrived as a helicopter hovered overhead and someone repeatedly yelled, FBI! Open the door! Several loud bangs were heard a short time later. Nearby, several police officers armed with rifles stood on alert in the back of a pickup truck.
