Consider This from NPR - A Mass Shooting in Maine and the Manhunt that Followed

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

Residents of Lewiston, Maine spent two days sheltering in place as authorities searched for the man suspected of fatally shooting 18 people and wounding 13 others.Law enforcement has a playbook for capturing fugitives. But Maine's rural setting, the nearby international border with Canada and the suspect's military training all complicate the search.NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with Kenneth Gray, who was a special agent with the FBI for 24 years, about what a search like this entails.Note: This episode was recorded on Friday afternoon, shortly before authorities lifted the shelter-in-place order for Lewiston and the surrounding area.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

As we take this on Friday afternoon, it's been nearly 48 hours since a shooter opened fire at a bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine. And then after that, a bar nearby. For two days, people living in the surrounding communities have been on lockdown as police hunt for the suspect. I mean, there's nothing more frightening than the idea that someone is out there who's already done a mass killing and still possesses weapons. That's Congresswoman Shelley Pingree, a Democrat from Maine. Her office is in Portland, and she says schools and businesses were shut down there too. You couldn't buy a cup of coffee on Commercial Street in Portland yesterday. Everything was shut down. There's just a really terrifying feeling. Every minute that this goes on, we're more and more concerned,

you know, because what's the next thing that's going to happen? And we understand that. And that's why we're working 24-7. That's Maine's Commissioner of Public Safety, Mike Soschuk. He says at the same time officers are investigating crime scenes, they are scouring the area for the suspected killer. We're going to be all over the place. That's not saying that we know that the individual is in this house or we know the individual is in that house or they're in that swath of land. But we do look at all these situations as if the individual could be in there.

And on top of all of this uncertainty, the community is grieving the 18 people killed in the shootings. We're going to continue to fight on their behalf to bring this individual to justice because we know that that has an impact on starting that healing process. Consider this. Law enforcement has a playbook for capturing fugitives. We'll talk to a former FBI special agent about what could make this manhunt especially challenging. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. It's Friday, October 27th. It's Consider This from NPR. By now, the debates that play out after a mass shooting have become

familiar, and we are seeing them unfold in Maine. There are questions about how the shooter acquired his gun. Maine's Republican Senator Susan Collins suggested that the suspect's guns should have been seized by police under the state's yellow flag law. It certainly seems that on the basis of the facts that we have, that the yellow flag law should have been triggered. If in fact the suspect was hospitalized for two weeks for mental illness, he should have been separated from his weapons. Since the shootings, we've heard calls for more restrictions on gun ownership from Democrats and opposition from Republicans, like newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana. Here he is on Fox News Thursday night.

At the end of the day, the problem is the human heart. It's not guns, it's not the weapons. At the end of the day, we have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves, and that's the Second Amendment. And that's why our party stands so strongly for that. But at the same time that debate is unfolding, this disaster isn't over for the people living in and around Lewiston, Maine, because the suspect still has not been apprehended.

In a rural wooded area like Maine, the search could be a difficult one. For more on how this manhunt could play out, we reached out to Kenneth Gray, who's a special agent with the FBI for 24 years. He spoke to my co-host, Elsa Chang. Okay, so just to make clear, Kenneth, you're not at all involved in advising the investigators conducting this search, but we wanted to give listeners some sense of what might be happening on the ground, and we're hoping you can help us do that. What stands out to you so far about this particular manhunt right now? So a lot of progress has been made on this case in that after the shooting

occurred, there was no knowledge of exactly who it was that was responsible for this. Within 12 hours, he had been identified, his car was located, and the hunt was on from there. The investigation actually has a couple of different moving parts. There is the manhunt itself. There is the investigation. There is evidence collection going on, there are interviews going on of victims and victim families, and a lot of different parts all being used together to try to conduct this. Right, a lot of different parts. But as you mentioned, Robert Card was identified as a person of interest pretty quickly after these shootings. And I imagine a lot of people out there right now are probably wondering what is taking so long to apprehend him, capture him, locate him. What would you say are some of the greatest challenges facing this investigation? So when a person disappears like

this into a very heavily wooded area, you have no idea if they are actually still in the woods there, if they have stolen a car and gotten out of the area or had pre-positioned a car and gotten out of the area or somehow else got taken out of the area. So the best thing you can do is to start where the last known position was, in this case, where his car was ditched there in Lisbon by the boat ramp, and start working out from there. And that is what law enforcement is doing. But they're also doing investigations to include interviewing family members, interviewing friends, interviewing coworkers, to see if there is information that can be used to try to help locate him. Apparently, he left a note in his home for his son that sounds like a suicide note.

And while the details have not been shared with the public, that might be indicative that maybe he went out into the woods to kill himself. Right, right. The possibility is out there that he is no longer alive. I'm curious, how much do you think his military training might have made this search harder? So a lot has been made in the media about the fact that he is a certified firearms instructor, but in reality, he's never been deployed to a combat area. His job in the National Guard was handling fuel. He was a civilian certified firearms instructor and was very proficient with weapons. And he's also an avid outdoorsman. So with all that in mind, those things would help him. But

the military aspect itself, I don't think that is that useful to him as far as staying free from being found. That was Kenneth Gray, a retired FBI special agent who now teaches in the criminal justice department at the University of New Haven. He was speaking to my co-host, Elsa Chen. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.