Update: There Are 18 Dead in a Mass Shooting in Maine, as a Preventable Cycle Repeats Itself Again

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | October 26, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | October 26, 2023 |

11 a.m: From a press conference held by Maine’s governor and law enforcement officials in Lewiston, we have an official number of casualties. There were 18 people killed and 13 injured. The suspect is still at large. Otherwise, there were few details released that were not already known.

Original Article
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Last night, there was a mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, about 35 miles from where three of us on staff live. There have been numerous casualties, ranging from 7 to 22, depending on what outlet you ask. Scores more have been injured. Mass shootings in the United States are not unusual. Mass shootings with 20 or more victims are rare, but not as rare as we’d like in the United States. What is unusual is that, more than 12 hours later, the mass murderer still has not been apprehended.

His name is Robert Card; he is being called a “person of interest.” He’s an Army reservist out of Saco, Maine. He trained soldiers in firearms use. He recently reported mental health issues, threatened to shoot a National Guard base in Saco, and spent two weeks in a mental health facility over the summer.

He shot up a bar and a bowling alley (during a youth bowling event) using assault-style weapons starting at around 7:15 p.m. last night. He may or may not have encountered others in a Wal-Mart distribution center, although there was no shooting reported there. He abandoned his car — a white Subaru Outback — near a boat ramp in nearby Lisbon, Maine. There are two helicopters in the area flying over Lewiston and Lisbon this morning. There are more than 100 law enforcement officers searching for him. He still has not been apprehended. It’s a nightmare scenario where police are dealing with a guy trained to kill, along with all the other skills he may have picked up in the military.

Schools, businesses, and even grocery stores are closed today, not just in Lewiston but in cities nearby (including Bowdoin, where Card is from, and Portland). Essentially, all of Southern Maine is sheltering in place. It is easily the deadliest mass shooting in Maine history. Last year, there were 29 homicides in all of Maine for the entire year.

It’s been more than 14 hours since the shooting. This is basically all that is known. It’s been interesting, however, seeing the media report on it. It’s clearly revealed a lack of local resources in newsrooms. We knew about the shooting 45 minutes before the local newscast interrupted local broadcasts; locals knew who the guy was based on his photo at least an hour before it was reported in the news. Meanwhile, the local newscasts and papers largely cite CNN as the source for their information (and CNN and the NYTimes have conflicting reports on the number of dead).

The local news knew very little and yet remained on the air most of the night. Early on, they found a random woman outside of the hospital where casualties were being taken and talked to her, though she clearly had no real information to share. It didn’t stop them from re-airing the interview with her. Kayleigh, who lives in Scotland, said she also saw the interview with this woman, who was repeating stuff she heard from her son, who was listening to a police scanner. Hard-hitting news.

Not that social media was much help, either. I stopped using X after the October 7th Israel/Hamas conflict because it was completely unreliable, and while Threads has been useful for “news,” it’s not great for “breaking news.” I reinstalled the X app just to see, but even about the shooting, it was full of dis- and misinformation, including numerous videos of Robert Card’s “arrest,” which only proved to be useful when we had to convince the twins that he’d been captured so they would go to sleep (they were shocked this morning to find out that wasn’t true). There was also another Robert Card whose picture was being plastered on X last night who will have a hell of a morning to deal with now.

Elsewhere, Sean Hannity used the mass shooting as an excuse to brag about his MMA skills, which he says have prepared him for mass shootings like this. I’m sure the assault weapons of an Army reservist would have been no match for the MMA skills of a 60-year-old man.

We’ll provide updates on this post as they come in. I’m not particularly interested in teasing out the politics of the shooting, if only because it’s a vicious, endless cycle of thoughts and prayers, the Second Amendment, and mental health issues from the other side, and if the shooting death of 19 kids in Uvalde or the shooting death of 60 in Las Vegas hasn’t changed that dynamic, it’s unlikely a horrific mass shooting in Maine is going to change it, either. Preventable mass shootings, like climate change, is unfortunately just something we have to live with now because Republicans are more interested in controlling the bodies of women and preventing loving same-sex couples from marrying than dealing with this problem.