The attacks stunned a state of only 1.3 million people that has one of the country’s lowest homicide rates: 29 killings in all of 2022.
The suspect, Robert Card, is considered armed and dangerous and should not be approached, authorities said at a news conference. Card underwent a mental health evaluation in mid-July after he began acting erratically during training, a US official told The Associated Press.
Police said they have had no reported sightings of Card since the shootings at Schemengees Bar and Grille and at Sparetime Recreation, a bowling alley about 4 miles (6 kilometres) away.
The Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office released two photos of the suspect walking into the bowling alley with a rifle raised to his shoulder.
A telephone number listed for Card in public records was not in service.
Several FBI agents and other heavily armed officers gathered Thursday afternoon off a road where several relatives of Card lived near Bowdoin. A military-style vehicle and a white van arrived as a helicopter hovered overhead and someone repeatedly yelled, “FBI! Open the door!” Several loud bangs were heard a short time later. Nearby, several police officers armed with rifles stood on alert in the back of a pickup truck.
The Canada Border Services Agency issued an “armed and dangerous” alert to its officers stationed along the Canada-U.S. border.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills promised to do whatever was needed to find Card and to “hold whoever is responsible for this atrocity accountable … and to seek full justice for the victims and their families.”
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