The Lewiston Shootings and the Search for Robert Card

The first shooting began at Just-In-Time Recreation in Lewiston during a youth league event on October 25, 2023. People had gathered around bowling lanes when the ordinary business of the evening broke apart. The building became the first crime scene. The victims were not a number when the shots began; they were patrons inside a place built for rented shoes, polished lanes, and league nights. By the time officers took control of the scene, the town had a second location to fear.

Later that evening, the gunfire moved to Schemengees Bar & Grille in Lewiston. The restaurant became the second scene in the same city, separated from the bowling alley by time but joined by the person police were trying to find. Two familiar public places had been turned into sites of death within hours. Eighteen people were killed. Thirteen others were injured. The numbers entered the first emergency updates, but behind them were families waiting for names and survivors carrying the night out of those rooms.

Police identified Robert Card, 40, as the suspect. His name changed the shape of the response. This was no longer only a search for an unknown attacker who had vanished into a Maine night. It was a hunt for a named man whose location was unknown and whose capacity for further violence made every delay matter. The Androscoggin County Sheriff's Office released images of Card and helped direct the immediate response as investigators worked to move from the two scenes toward the person connected to them.

Card's public identity carried an official uniform behind it. Authorities said he was a sergeant first class in the U.S. Army Reserve, assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 304th Infantry Regiment. The Army said he had enlisted in December 2002 and worked as a petroleum supply specialist. Those facts established his service history. They did not supply a reason for the shootings, and the first days of the investigation did not produce a proven criminal motive. A rank and a job title could identify a man. They could not explain the dead.

On October 26, Maine State Police described Card as armed and dangerous. The warning traveled through official updates while officers searched Lewiston, Bowdoin, and Lisbon. Residents were ordered to shelter in place. Businesses closed. The search pressed into neighborhoods and open ground as law enforcement tried to keep people away from a suspect who had already crossed between two crowded locations. The public was asked to treat the danger as present, not finished.

The Androscoggin County Sheriff's Office and Maine State Police became the visible authorities of the second day: issuing updates, directing residents, and narrowing the geography. Their work was measured in perimeters, warnings, and roads held under watch. Lewiston remained tied to the crime scenes, while Bowdoin and Lisbon became part of the search. The boundary of the emergency widened because Card had not been located. Every town added to the alert carried the same practical question: where had he gone?

A significant lead came in Lisbon, where authorities found Card's car near a boat launch between October 26 and October 27. The vehicle gave investigators a fixed object in a moving search. It placed Card's trail beside the water and pulled officers toward a more concentrated area. The car was not a confession and it did not answer what had happened inside the bowling alley or restaurant. It was the kind of hard fact a manhunt depends on: metal, location, and the possibility that the missing suspect had been close.

The search continued around Lisbon as officers worked the area near the launch. Police updates kept Card's name in the center of the operation and repeated the warning that he was dangerous. The response had now outlasted the night of the shootings. Families were facing funerals and hospital rooms while officers were still looking for the man identified as responsible. The town's public life had been reduced to instructions: stay inside, avoid the roads, wait for information, and do not assume the danger had passed.

The details that could be stated plainly were already severe: two shootings in Lewiston on October 25, one at a youth league gathering and one at a restaurant; 18 people dead and 13 injured; Robert Card identified as the suspect; a search spread across Lewiston, Bowdoin, and Lisbon. Around those facts, rumor began looking for a motive and a more dramatic military biography. The verified account was narrower. Card's Army Reserve service and specialty were known. A formal Army firearms-instructor role was not established.

By October 27, the boat launch in Lisbon remained part of the story because Card's car had been found there, while the consequences of the two attacks remained fixed in Lewiston. The bowling alley and restaurant had become permanent coordinates for the families of the dead and injured. The public search had begun with images, warnings, and shelter orders. It narrowed toward a vehicle near the water, but the people taken from those two rooms did not return when the search moved on. The empty places were left behind.