By Louis Achi
At least 22 people were killed and 50 to 60 others were injured in shootings at multiple locations, including a bowling alley and a bar, in Lewiston, in the US state of Maine, on Wednesday, as per NBC News.
Lewiston police identified Robert Card, 40, on Facebook, as a person of interest in the bar and bowling alley shootings and said he should be considered “armed and dangerous.”
Police previously released three photos of an unidentified suspect with what appears to be a semi-automatic rifle, along with a photo of a white SUV, asking for the public’s help in identifying the suspect.
The Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office also released a photo of a bearded man wearing a brown hooded jacket and jeans and holding a handgun.
“There is an active shooter in Lewiston,” Maine state police said previously on the social media platform X. “We ask people to shelter in place. Please stay inside your home with the doors locked. Law enforcement is currently investigating at multiple locations.”
The shootings occurred at three separate businesses centres: the Sparetime Recreation bowling alley, the Schemengees Bar & Grille restaurant and the Walmart distribution centre, according to The Sun Journal, citing a Lewiston Police Department spokesman
The bowling alley is approximately 4 miles north of the bar and the distribution center is approximately 1.5 miles south of the bar.
Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston said in a statement that it is “responding to a mass casualty incident and an active shooter incident” and is coordinating the admission of patients with local hospitals. Lewiston, Maine’s largest city, is 35 miles north of Portland.
Lewiston, a former textile center and city of 38,000 in Androscoggin County, is located in southern Maine, halfway between Augusta, the capital, and Portland, the state’s most populous city.
President Joe Biden has been briefed and will continue to receive updates, a US official in Washington said.
The White House said the president spoke privately by phone with Maine Gov. Janet Mills, Sen. Angus King, Sen. Susan Collins and Rep. Jared Golden about the Lewiston shooting and offered full federal support in the wake of the attack.
If confirmed, the massacre would be the deadliest in the US since a man armed with an AK-47 opened fire on shoppers at an El Paso Walmart in August 2019. 23 people were killed in the shooting. Prosecutors called it an anti-Hispanic hate crime, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The 22 deaths are about the same number of homicides that typically occur in Maine in a given year.
According to the Maine State Police, the annual number of murders in Maine has ranged from 16 to 29 since 2012.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, shooting incidents involving four or more people have increased rapidly in the US and, based on the July trend, are expected to reach 647 in 2022 and 679 in 2023, according to archived data.
The 2017 Las Vegas Country Music Festival was the largest in the United States, with 58 people killed in a shooting at a high-rise hotel.
