(Lewiston) American police launched a massive manhunt Thursday for the shooter who opened fire in a bowling alley and a bar-restaurant, killing at least 22 people, the worst shooting of the year in the UNITED STATES.
These killings took place early Wednesday evening in Lewiston, the second largest city in the state of Maine (north-east), where the population was instructed to remain confined in the face of the danger posed by this “armed and dangerous” man. » and still on the run, according to local police.
The suspected shooter was identified as Robert Card, 40, and police released his photo. His motives remained unknown. According to CNN television, citing law enforcement sources, Card is an Army reservist and certified firearms instructor.
“We have 22 confirmed deaths and many, many injured,” Robert McCarthy, elected official from Lewiston, which has more than 36,000 inhabitants, told CNN.
“Our hospitals are not equipped to handle this type of shooting,” he added, specifying that there were between 50 and 60 injured.
Maine’s public safety official, Mike Sauschuck, declined to provide an assessment, citing “a very fluid situation.” The streets are filled with police searching for the shooter, he told reporters.
“We have literally hundreds of police officers working across the state of Maine on the case, to locate Mr. Card,” he said.
Ambulances arrived from central Maine to treat the injured, Councilman McCarthy said, and Lewiston’s two hospitals “called on all off-duty staff members to come in to assist.”
Principals at several Maine schools, including Bates College, said they would not hold classes Thursday, according to news releases.
This tragedy, one of the deadliest since the Las Vegas massacre in 2017, immediately joined the litany of shootings which regularly mourn the United States where firearms abound and are easily accessible for purchase. .
US President Joe Biden was briefed on the events and slipped away from a state dinner in honor of the Australian Prime Minister to call elected officials and officials including Governor Janet Mills, offering all necessary federal support, according to the White House.
Photos showing a man, dressed in a brown top and dark blue pants, armed with a shoulder-mounted semi-automatic rifle, were released by Androscoggin County police.
According to Mr. Sauschuck, the police located a wanted vehicle (a white SUV) in Lisbon, a town located about twelve km from Lewiston, where residents were also called to stay at home. Mr. Card was not in the vehicle, according to press reports.
The shooting broke out in at least two different locations, a bowling alley and a bar-restaurant, according to local police. The Boston FBI, the federal police, also said it was participating in the investigation.
Police and first responders reportedly arrived at the Sparetime Recreation bowling alley around 7:15 p.m. (8:15 p.m. Eastern), then received reports of another shooting at Schemengees Bar & Grille, according to the newspaper local Sun Journal.
Several American media outlets, for their part, mentioned another killing which allegedly took place the same evening in a logistics center of a Walmart supermarket, information which remains unconfirmed.
“Horrified”
“It’s an overwhelming situation. We have never experienced anything like this,” Cynthia Hunter, who has lived in Lewiston since 2012, testified on local television.
Public schools will be closed on Thursday, a school district official said on X (formerly Twitter).
“I am horrified by what happened in Lewiston this evening,” Maine representative Jared Golden said in a statement.
The United States is paying a very heavy price for the spread of firearms on its territory and the ease with which Americans have access to them.
The country has more individual weapons than inhabitants: one in three adults owns at least one weapon and almost one in two adults lives in a home where there is a weapon.
The consequence of this proliferation is the very high rate of firearm deaths in the United States, incomparable to that of other developed countries.
Excluding suicides, more than 15,000 people have died in gun violence since the start of the year in the country, and Wednesday’s attack is the deadliest recorded over the period, according to the Gun Violence Archive association. (GVA).
However, it is the mass shootings that stand out the most, while illustrating the ideological divide separating conservatives and progressives on the question of how to prevent such tragedies.
Recent American history is indeed punctuated by killings, with no place in daily life seeming safe, from the business to the church, from the supermarket to the discotheque, from the public highway to public transport. common.
But, despite the mobilization of more than a million demonstrators, the United States Congress has not adopted an ambitious law, many elected officials being under the influence of the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA), the first American gun lobby.
In fact, in a country where the possibility of owning a firearm is considered by millions of Americans as a fundamental constitutional right, the only recent legislative advances remain marginal, such as the generalization of criminal and psychiatric background checks above all. purchase of weapons.