In Lewiston they regained normality this Saturday. Which in their case consists of finally watching over their deceased and paying tribute to the 18 residents who died in the double shooting on Wednesday, in a bar and a bowling alley.
Everything was paused in the state of Maine, as if life and death were in a parenthesis. Even the country was heartbroken. It was curious to observe the special envoys to Israel on television put aside that war and give input and do interviews about the armed epidemic in the United States.
Until, after a nightmarish 48 hours, on Friday night it was announced that the fugitive gunman, Bowdoin resident Robert Card, had been found. The agents found him dead in a recycling center in Lisbon, twelve kilometers from Lewiston, where he worked. He was recently fired, according to some media.
Committed suicide. Next to his body, inside a truck trailer, were two weapons. There are indications that he took his own life on that bloody day, although “we will have to wait for the results of the autopsy,” said Michael Sauschuck, Maine’s public safety commissioner.
The specific motives of Card, 40 years old and an army reservist, who spent two weeks last July in a psychiatric center, have been taken to the grave. But it is clear that he performed in two places that he frequented and that he breathed his last in an enclave known to him because of his work ties.
“The mental issue plays an important role,” the commissioner remarked in this Saturday’s appearance. “Where there is paranoia, there are conspiracy theories and, from what we have read and seen, this individual felt that people were talking about him and hearing voices, which would have played a role in leading him to those two locations,” Sauschuck stated as a possible justification for the criminal outburst.
A one-kilometer path separated the point where the body was found, wearing the same clothes seen in the recordings of that night, and the place where their white Subaru was located, shortly after committing the massacre, near the shore of the Androscoggin River. That area of ??the channel began to be reviewed on Friday by divers.
In the vehicle he left his phone and a farewell note, not explicitly suicide, although it was deduced because he wrote the password to his cell phone and the number of his bank account.
He also left an assault rifle, with which he allegedly committed the massacre, waiting for the ballistics report. He bought this weapon and the two that he carried with him legally, some a few months ago and others before, without warning about his mental condition. Sauschuck excused that, to date, they have not found any report in which it was ruled that he was forced into a center, which is why he would have done so voluntarily, nor was he forced into treatment. This would mean that there would be no trace that could raise red flags regarding his possession of those weapons.
The commissioner thanked the accused’s family for their close collaboration. As soon as they released his image, three of those relatives called to identify the fugitive. Despite everything, Sauschuck regretted that some are suffering threats.
Investigators received 821 tips. They processed 197. In this group the contact of the owner of the recycling plant must be included. The agents had gone twice to search the facilities, without success. But the owner enlightened them. He told them that he had a parking lot on the other side of the road. The state police went there. There were 55 to 60 trailers. In one, open, was the escape.
“Like many – stressed the governor of Maine, Janet Mills – I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that Robert Card is no longer a threat to anyone.”
