In Lewiston, they regained normality this Saturday, which in their case consists of finally looking after their dead and paying tribute to the eighteen neighbors who died in Wednesday's double shooting, at a bar and at a bowling alley.
Everything was on pause in the state of Maine, as if life and death were in a parenthesis. Even the country was heartbroken. It was funny to watch the special envoys to Israel from the television stations parking the war and giving input and giving interviews about the armed epidemic in the USA.
Until, after 48 hours of nightmare, it was announced on Friday night that they had found the fugitive attacker, Robert Card, who lived at Bowdoin. Officers found him dead at a recycling center in Lisbon, twelve miles from Lewiston, where he worked. He was fired recently, according to some media.
He killed himself. Next to his body, inside a truck trailer, were two guns. There are indications that he took his own life that bloody day, although "we will have to wait for the results of the autopsy," said Michael Sauschuck, Maine's commissioner of public safety.
The specific motives of Card, 40 years old and an army reservist, who spent two weeks in July in a psychiatric center, have been taken to the grave. But it is clear that he performed in two venues that he frequented and that he breathed his last in an enclave known to him due to his work connection.
"The mental issue plays an important role", remarked the commissioner at Saturday's appearance. "Where there is paranoia there are conspiracy theories and from what we have read and seen, this individual believed that people were talking about him and hearing voices, which would have played a significant role in leading him to both locations ”, said Sauschuck as a possible justification for the criminal rampage.
A road of one kilometer separated the point where the corpse appeared, wearing the same clothes seen in the recordings of that night, and the place where they located his white Subaru, shortly after committing the killing, near from the banks of the Androscoggin River. This area of the course began to be checked by divers on Friday.
In the vehicle, he left his phone and a farewell note, not explicitly suicide, although it was inferred that, because he wrote down the key to his cell phone and the number of his bank account.
He also left an assault rifle, with which he allegedly committed the murder, pending the ballistics report. This weapon and the two he was carrying, he bought them legally; some, a few months ago, and others, in the past, without any alert being raised due to his mental condition. Sauschuck apologized that, as of now, they have not found any report in which he was forced to be admitted to a center, which is why he would have been admitted there voluntarily, without being forced into treatment. This would mean that there would be no trace that could raise the alarms regarding the possession of weapons.
The commissioner thanked the close collaboration of the accused's family. So they spread his image, three of these relatives called with the desire to identify the fugitive. Even so, Sauschuck regretted that some of these relatives are suffering threats.
Investigators received 821 leads. They processed 197. In this group, the contact of the owner of the recycling plant must be listed. Officers had gone twice to search the premises, without success, but the owner enlightened them. He indicated to them that he had a parking lot on the other side of the road. State troopers went there. There were between 55 and 60 trailers. In one, open, was the fugitive.
"Like many people - stressed the governor of Maine, Janet Mills -, I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that Robert Card is no longer a threat to anyone."
