When a man with an assault rifle stormed into Schemengees Bar & Grille in Maine, Joseph Walker grabbed a long-bladed knife. He wanted to save lives. He didn’t stand a chance.
Moments later, he was dead. Seventeen others would also die in a mass shooting that unfolded in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday night, prompting extended shelter-in-place orders while a widespread, urgent hunt for the gunman continued. Thirteen people were also injured in the shooting.
Walker’s father, Leroy Walker Sr., said the family had learned that heartbreaking version of events from Maine State Police more than 14 hours after the gunman opened fire, first in a bowling alley filled with children and then in the bar about four miles away.
“My son has always been a person that would intervene when there was trouble,” the elder Walker, 74, recalled in a phone interview with The Times. He said the two of them often went to clubs and pool halls, where alcohol sometimes led to fights.
“We knew how to, most of the time, control people without getting hurt. But this time —,” he trailed off. “You don’t take a knife to a gun fight, and my son thought he was going to do it, and it ended up costing him his life.”
The Lewiston Police Department has identified 40-year-old Robert Card as the man being sought on suspicion of the shooting.
Police declined to name a possible motive for the attack. Michael Sauschuck, commissioner of the Maine Department of Public Safety, said law enforcement officials were “following up on a number of different things,” but that the suspected gunman’s location was unknown.
“This suspect is still at large,” Sauschuck said, adding that authorities had “an incredibly strong laser-like focus on bringing this suspect into custody and ultimately to justice.”
Law enforcement served multiple search warrants Thursday night at a residence associated with Card along Meadow Road in Bowdoin, Maine, but Card was not located.
The first emergency call came in at 6:56 p.m. Wednesday, reporting a shooter at Just-In-Time Recreation, authorities said.
Meghan Hutchinson and her 10-year-old daughter, Zoey Levesque, were at the bowling alley when the shooting began, according to ABC News. Hutchinson told the outlet they and others had barricaded themselves in a back room. Her daughter was grazed by a bullet.
“I never thought I’d grow up and get a bullet in my leg,” Zoey said. “Why? Why do people do this?”
Rob Young, 41, told The Times that his brother Bill Young and Bill’s 14-year-old son, Aaron, were at the Just-In-Time bowling alley for a league competition.
Young said he stayed up all Wednesday night at his Maryland home, searching for any information online and calling authorities, before flying to his brother’s home near Lewiston. At 1 p.m. Thursday, State Police arrived to let the family know that both his brother and nephew had been killed.
“What gave us hope the whole time,” Young said, his voice rising, “is that they told us that no kid was hurt.”
“We went 18 hours,” he said, holding out hope for Aaron’s survival. before getting the devastating news.
Twelve minutes after the first calls came in about a shooter at the bowling alley, “multiple calls” came in of an active shooter inside Schemengees Bar & Grille.
Among those at the bar that night was Mike Dyndiuk’s son, Chris. He was there with seven other deaf people for a cornhole tournament.
Eight people were killed at the bar, including at least three of Chris’ friends. Dyndiuk said his son was standing 10 feet from the shooter.
“It could have been him, easily,” Dyndiuk, 63, told The Times in a phone interview, after he paused to regain his composure. “The only way he got out was the guy was reloading, and he ran out.”
“I said to him today, ‘You’re not going to forget this,’” Dyndiuk said, “‘I’m sorry. Those images ... get easier to deal with, but they don’t go away.’”
Dyndiuk said that if he had been there, he would have shot the gunman.
“I carry a gun all the time,” he said.
By the time the shooting ended, seven people at the bowling alley lay dead, authorities said, along with eight people at the bar. An additional three people died later in the hospital.
Tens of thousands of residents of Lewiston — the second-largest city in the state, with a population under 40,000 — and in the nearby towns of Bowdoin and Lisbon were under a shelter-in-place order Thursday as the search for the gunman intensified. More than 350 state and federal law enforcement personnel were involved in the manhunt, according to the State Police.
Lewiston Mayor Carl Sheline said Thursday that safety would be the “number one priority,” and encouraged residents to support one another and the families of those lost.
“We have a long road ahead of us. Our community will never fully heal from this attack, and each of us will have to lean on our neighbors, ask for help when we need it, and take this one day at a time,” he told The Times in an email.
“We are known for our strength and grit in this town,” he said, “and we will need both in the days to come. Be kind to one another.”
Gov. Janet Mills, at a news conference Thursday, called the attacks a “dark day for Maine,” a state of 1.3 million people.
“This attack strikes at the very heart of who we are and the values we hold dear for this precious place we call home,” Mills said. “All Maine people are sharing in the sorrow [of] the families who lost loved ones last night.”
In a news conference Thursday afternoon, U.S. Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), a Lewiston native, asked for forgiveness from his community members for his opposition to assault weapons bans in the past.
Standing solemnly in Lewiston City Hall, he pledged to fight for gun restrictions in Congress.
“My determination to protect my own daughter and wife in our home and in our community [was] because of a false confidence that our community was above this, and then we could be in full control — among many other misjudgments,” Golden said. “The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure.”
Police have issued an arrest warrant for Card on suspicion of eight counts of murder, based on the number of victims who have currently been identified. Those murder counts will likely increase to 18 as more victims are named.
Card is a 21-year member of the Army Reserve, according to U.S. Army spokesperson Bryce Dubee. As a sergeant first class, Card served as a petroleum supply specialist and received several Army achievement medals, Dubee said.
Law enforcement sources told The Times that Card was a “trained firearms instructor” who recently reported problems with his mental health — “hearing voices” and threatening “to shoot up the National Guard Base in Saco,” Maine. He was committed to a mental health facility for two weeks over the summer and released, according to law enforcement.
CNN reported that the suspect’s brother, Ryan Card, said the family was urging Robert Card to turn himself in.
Sauschuck, the public safety commissioner, declined to answer questions about Card’s reported mental health history and how he had access to firearms, saying authorities would be reviewing that information.
Federal, multi-state and local authorities are assisting in the search. Tactical and evidence response teams as well as investigative units are among the resources that have been deployed.
Still images of surveillance video from the Lewiston police and circulated on social media Wednesday night showed a man holding an assault-style rifle and walking into a business. The man had short, dark hair and a beard and was wearing a brown sweatshirt, dark pants and tan shoes.
Police have said that a vehicle connected to the suspected gunman was found at a boat ramp in Lisbon, about eight miles southeast of Lewiston.
In a post on its Facebook page, Just-In-Time, the scene of the first shooting, said: “None of this seems real, but unfortunately it is.”
“We are devastated for our community and our staff. We lost some amazing and whole hearted people from our bowling family and community last night. There are no words to fix this or make it better. We praying for everyone who has been affected by this horrific tragedy. We love you all and hold you close in our hearts,” the post said.
A post on Schemengees’ Facebook page expressed the anguish and devastation felt by the community.
“My heart is crushed. I am at a loss for words,” the post said. “In a split second your world gets [turned] upside down for no good reason. We [lost] great people in this community. How can we make any sense of this. Sending out prayers to everyone.”
Gov. Mills said she had spoken with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who offered support in the investigation. Mills ordered all U.S. and Maine state flags to be flown at half-staff for the next five days.
In a statement Thursday morning, Biden urged Congress to take action to curb gun violence, including banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, passing universal background checks and requiring safe gun storage.
“For countless Americans who have survived gun violence and been traumatized by it, a shooting such as this reopens deep and painful wounds,” he said. “Far too many Americans have now had a family member killed or injured as a result of gun violence. That is not normal, and we cannot accept it.”
As the manhunt continues, families are struggling to cope with what unfolded Wednesday night and their newfound loss.
Walker Sr. said he was talking to news outlets because he wants people to know who his son, Joseph, was. He was the type of person, Walker said, who raised “many, many dollars” for community events and fundraisers.
“My son had the biggest heart that you could ever have,” he said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better son.”
Meanwhile, Dyndiuk is focused on consoling his son and pondering the cause of mass shootings in America.
“They always try to make this about guns, and it’s not; it’s about mental health,” he said. “Our country has failed the mentally ill.”
Times staff writers Terry Castleman and Jeong Park contributed to this report.
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