‘That’s not to say the crisis is over,’ DPS Commissioner Mike Sauschuck said.
State officials in Maine lifted a shelter in place order activated for four cities after Wednesday’s fatal mass shooting in Lewiston.
Department of Public Safety Commissioner Michael Sauschuck also announced a limitation for the state’s resident only deer hunting day scheduled for Saturday: The day would go on as planned except in Lewiston, Lisbon, Bowdoin, and Monmouth.
Investigators are still combing over crime scenes in Lewiston and Lisbon, where suspect Robert Card’s vehicle was located. Card lived in Bowdoin and has family connections in Monmouth, Sauschuck said.
Meanwhile, the search continues for 40-year-old Card, the Army reservist suspected of carrying out the shootings at Just-in-Time Recreation bowling alley and Schemengees Bar & Grill, a popular restaurant.
Eighteen people were killed at the two locations, ranging in age from 14 to 76. Sauschuck also released the names of all 18 people at Friday afternoon’s news conference, as CrimeOnline reported.
Lewiston, Auburn, Lisbon, and Bowdoin have been under the shelter in place order since Wednesday night, but Sauschuck said officials conferred during the day Friday and decided to lift it.
“That’s not to say that the crisis is over,” he said. “We still want people to remain vigilant.”
Sauschuck also answered a question from the morning briefing about police response time. He said that the first uniformed officers arrived at Just-in-Time four minutes after the 6:56 p.m. 911 call, but that four plainclothed officers, who had been at a nearby gun range, heard the call and were on scene about a minute and a half after the 911 call.
The first 911 call in from Schemengees, about four miles away from the bowling alley, at 7:08 p.m., and officers were on scene five minutes later, he said.
Card was gone from both locations before police arrived.
Sauschuck added that divers were not in Androscoggin River as planned on Friday, although investigators did multiple passes of the search area by air and used sonar on the river. The plan is to put divers in the river on Saturday.
The commissioner said that investigators have no information that they’ll find anything in the river, but they’re “not closing off” any avenues of investigation, particularly since Card’s Subaru was found at the boat launch on the river.
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[Featured image: A couple walks by a banner that was put up in response to this week’s deadly mass shootings on October 27, 2023, in Lewiston, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)]
