Lewiston | Documents reveal the horror of Maine’s deadliest mass shooting

In October 2023, police arrived at two shooting locations in Lewiston, unsure if the shooter was still at large. The living dead lay on the ground. Desperate survivors screamed for help as they searched for the shooter, a police official says.

“They’re trying to hold our legs and stop us and we can’t help them,” Lewiston Police Officer Keith Caute wrote. We must continue to see that they will be alive when we return. »

Another police officer’s first instinct was to think that an act of terrorism had taken place. An appearance reinforced by a strong police presence and flashing blue lights. “I felt like we were at war,” Auburn Lt. Steven Gosselin wrote.

Their descriptions of the scenes at the bowling alley and bar where 18 people were killed and 13 injured were included in more than 3,000 pages of documents released Friday by the Maine Department of Public Safety in response to freedom of information requests. Associated Press and other news organizations.

Andhra journalists reviewed about a third of the pages before the website containing the documents went down on Friday afternoon. State officials said the documents would be available again Monday.

Among the details included in the report were words from a note left by the shooter, 40-year-old Army reservist Robert Gard, who said he “should be left alone,” the Portland Press Herald pointed out. The note also contained the password to his phone and the passwords needed to access his various accounts.

October 25, 2023 The shooter’s family and fellow soldiers said he suffered a nervous breakdown months before the shooting.

Robert Card’s body was found two days after the shooting in the back of a tractor-trailer on his former employer’s property near Lisbon. An autopsy concluded that he had committed suicide.

After the shooting, the Legislature passed new gun laws for Maine and expanded funding for emergency mental health care.