Documents reveal horror of Maine’s deadliest mass shooting
PORTLAND, Maine — Thousands of pages of Maine Department of Public Safety documents released Friday detail the chaos and carnage surrounding the the state’s deadliest mass shooting.
Officers arrived at the two shooting scenes in Lewiston last October, not knowing if the shooter was still there, and with living and dead victims on the floors. One officer described desperate survivors screaming for help as he searched for the shooter.
βThey are grabbing our legs and trying to stop us, but we can’t help them,β wrote Lewiston Officer Keith Caouette. βWe have to walk by and continue the search and hope they are still alive when we get back.β
Another police officer’s first instinct was that an act of domestic terrorism had been committed, underscored by the heavy police presence and flashing blue lights. βI really felt like we were at war,β wrote Auburn Lt. Steven Gosselin.
Their descriptions of the scenes at a bowling alley and a bar and grill where 18 people were killed and 13 others injured are included in more than 3,000 pages of documents released Friday in response to Freedom of Access Act requests from The Associated Press and other news organizations.
Associated Press reporters had viewed more than a third of the pages before the website containing the documents crashed late Friday afternoon. State officials said documents will be made available again on Monday.
Among the details in the report were words from a note left by the shooter, 40-year-old Army Reservist Robert Card, who wrote that he “just wanted to leave the (expletive) alone,” according to the Portland Press Herald . reported. The note also contained his phone password and the passwords needed to access his various accounts.
The gunman’s family and fellow Army reservists reported that he suffered a mental breakdown in the months leading up to the shooting on Oct. 25, 2023. In the aftermath, the Legislature passed. new gun laws for Maine which strengthened the state’s “yellow flag” law, criminalized the transfer of guns to banned people and expanded funding for mental health crisis care.
Card’s body was found two days after the shooting in the back of a tractor-trailer on the property of his former employer in nearby Lisbon. An autopsy revealed that he had died by suicide.
The documents released Friday include firsthand accounts from officers about what they saw, along with additional details about the massive search for Card and the investigation.
At its height, the law enforcement presence was massive with 16 SWAT teams and officers from 14 different agencies, along with eight helicopters and additional aircraft, and an underwater recovery team, State Police Lt. Tyler Stevenson wrote.
βI have been in several large-scale manhunts in my career, but this was by far the largest manhunt I have been a part of,β he wrote.
Officers used lasers to map the shooting scenes, searched Tracfone purchases at a Walmart in case Card had a burner phone and even retrieved data from Card’s Subaru infotainment system.
Police have recovered hundreds of potential evidence from a number of locations, including bullet cartridges and fragments, telephones, hair, fibers, cotton swabs from an accelerator, a handwritten letter, a tomahawk knife, arrows, a hearing aid, broken glasses, a blue sneaker, a black chain , bean bags, various military documents, $255 cash and night vision goggles.
The documents underscored the confusion as police officers poured into the region. In addition to the two crime scenes, police responded to unsubstantiated reports of a gunman in a field near the shooting site, at another restaurant and at a massive Walmart distribution center.
βI asked who was in charge and got no answer,β wrote Androscoggin County Deputy Jason Chaloux, describing the scene outside the bar.
Monmouth Police Chief Paul Ferland said that when he arrived in Lisbon hours after the shooting, 60 to 70 officers were “standing around,” waiting for instructions that never came. A member of the US Marshals Service told him he had not received any updates and that he was going to follow his own directions.
Ferland said he received more information from reporters outside the hospital than from law enforcement, and that he withdrew his officers early in the morning because of concerns for their safety.
βIt became clear to me that there was a lack of communication between the agencies and no one knew what was going on,β he wrote.
Others described the gruesome scenes in the bowling alley and the bar and grill. Cell phones ringing on bloodied tabletops, tablecloths and the cover of a pool table turned into makeshift stretchers.
βA quick scan of the building revealed blood and flesh scattered throughout the business,β Lewiston Detective Zachary Provost wrote of the bowling alley. βI could also smell the heavy odor of gunpowder mixed with burning flesh.β
Caouette, the Lewiston officer who responded to the bar and grill, said some witnesses shouted that the shooter was still in the building when he arrived, while others said he had already left. He told a man lying on the ground to βhang in there,β but by the time he returned to him, the man had died.
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This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Keith Caouette’s name.
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Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire. Associated Press writer Steve LeBlanc contributed from Boston.