The city of Lewiston is stronger than “any number of bullets” and is continuing to recover together from the Oct. 25 mass shootings, Lewiston Mayor Carl Sheline told CNN Saturday.
“Yesterday I declared Love Lewiston Day,” he said. “People are holding up. Our collective strength is far greater than any number of bullets. The senseless violence of the past Wednesday shook us as a community, but I have no doubt we’ll be OK.”
The shootings killed 18 in a bowling alley and a bar and injured 13, the worst mass shooting in Maine history and the deadliest in the U.S. so far this year.
Sheline’s comments came the morning after President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden visited the city to meet with first responders and victims’ families.
“Regardless of our politics this is about protecting our freedom to go to a bowling alley, a restaurant, a school, a church without being shot and killed,” Biden said.
Sheline praised Biden and the first lady for making the trip to Lewiston, a city of 37,000 in central Maine.
“It really shows that the entire country is with us,” he said. “As you know, the president is no stranger to personal grief and loss and it was really supportive to have him here to meet with victims and their families.”
After two days of stay-at-home orders for thousands, the body of Robert Card, 40, of Bowdoin was found in a box trailer at a Lisbon recycling facility where he used to work. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
In recent days, questions about whether police should have taken steps to take guns away from Card earlier this year have arisen as more information about past threats have come to light.
Over the summer while training with the military in New York, Card spent 14 days in a mental health facility after he said people were accusing him of being a pedophile and other actions that concerned commanders.
In September, a reservist told a superior in Saco that he worried that Card might “snap and do a mass shooting.”
After that deputies twice tried to find Card, but never located him, prompting them to cancel a statewide alert asking for help to find him.
The mass shooting in Lewiston occurred one week later.
When pressed by CNN on whether police should have done more to stop Card before the massacre, Sheline said he will wait for the results of an independent investigation called for by Gov. Janet Mills.
“Some of the things I’ve been hearing are certainly concerning,” he said. “I’ll be looking forward to seeing the report when it comes out.”
He also did not take a strong stand on whether Maine’s laws should be strengthened from a “yellow flag” to a more stringent “red flag,” which gives police more power to take weapons away more quickly.
“I would certainly support people who are not supposed to have weapons to not have them,” Sheline said, noting that it will be up to the Legislature to make that decision.