Thousands of pages of documents from the Maine Department of Public Safety released Friday contain a detailed account of the chaos and carnage surrounding the state’s deadliest mass shooting.
Officers arrived at the scenes of two shootings in Lewiston last October to find surviving and dead victims lying on the floor, not knowing if the shooter was still there, and one officer said they heard survivors frantically screaming for help while they searched for the shooter.
“They tried to grab us by the legs and stop us, but we were unable to help them,” Lewiston Police Officer Keith Caouette wrote. “We could only pass by, continue searching, and hope that when we returned they would be alive.”
Another officer said the heavy police presence and flashing blue lights suggested an act of domestic terrorism was taking place. “It really did feel like we were at war,” Auburn University Police Lt. Steven Gosselin wrote.
The descriptions of the scene at the bowling alley and bar and grill, where 18 people were killed and 13 injured, were included in more than 3,000 pages of articles released Friday in response to Freedom of Information Act requests by The Associated Press and other news organizations.
Associated Press reporters reviewed more than a third of the pages before the website hosting the documents went down late Friday afternoon. State officials said the documents would be available again on Monday.
Among the details included in the report was the wording of a note left by the shooter, Robert Card, a 40-year-old Army reservist, who simply wrote, “Leave the (expletive) alone,” according to the Portland Press Herald. The note also included the password to his cell phone, as well as the passwords needed to access his various accounts.
The shooter’s family and Army Reserve colleagues reported that he had been suffering from a mental breakdown in the months leading up to the shooting on Oct. 25, 2023. After the shooting, the state legislature passed new gun control laws in Maine that strengthened the state’s “yellow flag” law, criminalized the transfer of guns to people prohibited from possessing them, and expanded funding for mental health crisis care.
Card’s body was found in the back of a tractor-trailer on his former employer’s property near Lisbon two days after the shooting, and an autopsy ruled it a suicide.
The documents released Friday contain details about what officers witnessed firsthand, as well as the extensive search and investigation into Card.
State Police Lt. Tyler Stevenson wrote that there was a heavy law enforcement presence, including, at its peak, 16 special units and officers from 14 different agencies, eight helicopters and additional planes, and an underwater recovery team.
“I have been involved in several large-scale investigations in my career, but this was by far the largest investigation I have ever been involved in,” Stevenson wrote.
Officers used lasers to map the scene of the shooting, searched a Tracfone purchased at Walmart in case Card had a “disposable” cell phone, and retrieved data from the infotainment system of Card’s Subaru.
Police recovered hundreds of items of potential evidence from multiple locations, including bullet casings and shrapnel, a cell phone, hair, fibers, gas pedal wipes, a handwritten letter, a tomahawk knife, an arrow, a hearing aid, broken glasses, blue sneakers, a black chain necklace, a bean bag, various military records, $255 in cash, and a night vision monocle.
The documents highlighted the chaos that erupted as police swarmed the scene, responding to two crime scenes as well as unsubstantiated reports of a man with a gun in a field near the shooting scene, at another restaurant and at a massive Walmart distribution center.
“I asked who was responsible and received no answer,” Androscoggin County Deputy Sheriff Jason Shalou wrote, describing the scene outside the bar.
Others described horrifying scenes inside: blood-smeared tables, mobile phones ringing, tablecloths and pool table covers transformed into makeshift stretchers.
“A brief search of the premises revealed blood and flesh scattered throughout the establishment,” Lewiston Detective Zachary Provost wrote about the bowling alley, “as well as a strong odor of gunpowder mixed with burnt flesh.”
Lewiston Police Officer Kauwette, who responded to the bar and grill, said some witnesses yelled that the shooter was still in the building when they arrived, but others said he had already left. Kauwette yelled at the man on the floor to “hang in there,” but when he returned he was dead.
