Lewiston (US), Oct 27: Shocked and fearful Maine residents kept to their homes for a second night as hundreds of heavily armed police and FBI agents searched intensely for Robert Card, an Army reservist authorities say fatally shot 18 people at a bowling alley and a bar in the worst mass killing in state history.
Much of Thursday’s search focused on a property belonging to one of Card’s relatives in rural Bowdoin, where trucks and vans full of armed agents from the FBI and other agencies eventually surrounded a home. Card and anyone else inside were repeatedly ordered to surrender.
But hours later, after repeated announcements and a search, authorities moved off – and it was still unclear whether Card had ever been at the location, state police said.
Richard Goddard, who lives on the road where the search took place, knows the Card family Card, who is four years younger, knows the terrain well, Goddard said.
Several homes were being searched and every lead pursued in the hunt for Card, a 40-year-old with firearms instructor training.
Authorities said Card should be considered armed and dangerous and not approached.
Card is suspected of opening fire with at least one rifle at a bar and a bowling alley Wednesday in Lewiston, which is about 24 kilometres from Bowdoin and is Maine’s second-largest city.
The evening shootings killed 18 people and wounded 13 others, with three people still hospitalised in critical condition, authorities said.
Authorities haven’t said how many guns were used in the shooting or how they were obtained.
Schools, doctor’s offices and grocery stores closed and people stayed behind locked doors in cities as far as 80 kilometres from the scenes of the shootings.
Maine’s largest city, Portland, closed its public buildings, while Canada Border Services Agency issued an “armed and dangerous” alert to its officers stationed along the US border.
Streets in Lewiston and surrounding communities were virtually deserted late on Thursday night.
The occasional truck or police patrol would drive through neighbourhoods dotted with illuminated giant pumpkins and ghosts for Halloween.
Schools in Lewiston were to remain closed Friday, while those in Portland would decide in the morning whether to open.
Bates College in Lewiston also cancelled classes on Friday and postponed the inauguration of the school’s first Black president. (AP)
