Authorities said they have been flooded with more than 530 tips and leads to Card’s possible whereabouts.
There was a brief flurry of excitement late on Thursday when dozens of heavily armed officers, backed by armored vehicles and a helicopter, surrounded a Card family property in Bowdoin, near Lewiston.
State police warned, “please come outside” and “we don’t want anyone to get hurt” over a loudspeaker.
By Friday afternoon, there was no indication that the police were any closer to finding the man that Maine Governor Janet Mills said remained armed and dangerous.
“JUST A DEVASTATING SITUATION”
“Uneasy,” Lewiston resident Jeremy Hiltz told AFP when asked how he felt. “It’s a small community. When something like this happens, everybody knows somebody” affected.
He said a number of intersecting social crises have afflicted Lewiston, a city of about 38,000 inhabitants.
“This community itself has been devastated by addiction and housing crisis and poverty … So to put this on top of it, it’s really just a devastating situation for us,” Hiltz said.
One longtime neighbor in Bowdoin, Dave Letarte, said news of the shooting “floored me.”
An education center for the deaf and hard of hearing, located on a small island 45 minutes drive south of Lewiston, was particularly hard-hit by the tragedy.
Among those killed at the Schemengees bar-restaurant – where the killer appeared after the rampage at the bowling alley – were four men with ties to the school, as former students, educators or parents, Karen Hopkins, the school’s director, told AFP.
“It’s a heavy time. Our community is shattered right now,” she said.
Card is an army reservist, but had not been deployed in any combat zone. US media reported that he had recently been sent for psychiatric treatment after he said he was hearing voices.
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.
Source: CNA
