Authorities search the area around a boat launch Friday in Lisbon, Maine
LEWISTON (Maine, US), Oct 28 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The US Army reservist accused of killing 18 people and injuring 13 others in a shooting rampage in a Maine city has been found dead, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after a two-day manhunt that terrorized local communities, multiple sources said.
Robert Card’s body was found in a wooded area near Lisbon, a town about 8 miles from where the shooting took place in Lewiston on Wednesday evening, the sources said. That location is close to a recycling plant Card was recently fired from, a law enforcement source said.
The Androscoggin County Sheriff confirmed Friday night on Facebook that Robert Card was found dead, without elaborating.
Wednesday evening’s shooting at a bowling alley and restaurant in Lewiston prompted the two-daymanhunt, shelter-in-place-orders and the shutdown of schools and businesses. The attackwas thedeadliest US mass shooting since last year’s massacre at a school in Uvalde, Texas.
Earlier Friday, multiple law enforcement sources said the gun investigators believe Card used to carry out the massacre was purchased legally just days before he was hospitalized and ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
Sources say the weapon found inside Card’s 2013 white Subaru Outback appears to be the same one fired by the gunman at the bowling alley and a local bar, though a ballistics match has not been confirmed.
Authorities searched two days across southern Maine for the shooting suspect. Before his body was found, divers were expected to join the effort Saturday to scour the Androscoggin River, near where his car was found.
Part of the reason why the manhunt shifted to include the water is a note left by the suspect and found by authorities, a law enforcement official told CNN. The source said the message suggested Card didn’t expect to be alive when the note was found and could be akin to a suicide note.
The massacre in Maine is the deadliest of at least 566 mass shootings in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. With 18 victims killed, the mass shooting is also the deadliest since the Uvalde massacre in May 2022, when 21 people were gunned down at a Texas elementary school.
This latest shooting is one of the deadliest in the United States since 2017, when a gunman opened fire on a crowded music festival in Las Vegas, killing 60 people. — NNN-AGENCIES
