Maine mass shooter Robert Card has been found dead in the woods with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head – ending a 48-hour manhunt involving over 300 members of law enforcement.
Androscoggin sheriff’s office wrote on Facebook: ‘The suspect in Wednesday nights shootings has been located and is deceased.’
Card, 40, was found near Lisbon, where his car was abandoned shortly after Wednesday’s massacre. His body was reportedly located near a recycling plant from where he was recently fired.
It was unclear how long he had been dead.
Eighteen people died when Card, an army reservist who had suffered a recent mental breakdown, opened fire at a bowling alley and bar in Lewiston.
Card went on the run, leaving his car and cell phone behind and sparking a 48-hour manhunt.
Robert Card, 40, has been found dead, multiple news outlets report. Card is accused of killing 18 people in a series of shootings in Lewiston, Maine on Wednesday night
The 40-year-old is seen during his rampage through Lewiston, murdering 18 people and injuring more than a dozen others on Wednesday night
Card, a US Army reserve soldier, launched the initial attack at a bowling alley (pictured) at around 6.56pm then struck again at bar and restaurant four miles away just 12 minutes later
‘So happy this nightmare is over,’ said John Riordan, who lives near the scene.
He told the Sun Journal: ‘Hopefully the families can get some closure. It will be nice to get back to some state of normalcy.’
Susan Collins, a senator for Maine, said she was informed by Joe Biden that Card was dead.
‘When President Biden called me this evening to tell me the perpetrator of the heinous attacks in Lewiston had been found, we both expressed our profound appreciation for the courage and determination of these brave men and women.’
Search teams on Friday were focusing their efforts on a river near Lisbon, where Card was known to moor his boat and jet ski.
On Thursday, there were multiple raids at homes in the town of Bowdoin belonging to Card’s parents, and his brother.
Police on Thursday confirmed that a suicide note, addressed to his son, had been found at his home.
Card spent 20 years in the Army reserves, and was a keen hunter and fisherman.
His marksmanship and survival skills made him a formidable foe for those trying to track him down, and local residents were ordered to stay indoors from Wednesday night until Friday evening.
A picture of Card’s disturbed mental state quickly emerged.
He had been fired from his job at a recycling plant, Maine Recycling, and had split from a recent partner.
The 40-year-old is was an Army reservist stationed out of the city of Saco
Police officers are seen on Friday searching for Card in the Lisbon and Lewiston area
A colleague at a recycling plant told The Daily Beast he had behaved ‘violently and oddly’ towards co-workers in the last year.
‘When I saw it was him, I was not surprised,’ Jeremy Bowen, who was Card’s driver-helper at Maine Recycling, told The Daily Beast on Thursday.
‘A lot of the other helpers he was working with were starting to say he was acting violently and oddly.
‘I heard about [the shootings] on the news, and like I said, I really wasn’t surprised.’
In July he was sectioned for two weeks after he said he was hearing voices, and threatened to open fire at his Army base.
His sister-in-law, Katie Card, said he had been fitted with hearing aids and became convinced that he could hear people talking about him at the bowling alley and bar he would later attack.
‘He truly believed he was hearing people say things,’ she told The Daily Beast.
‘This all just happened within the last few months.’
She said he would ‘get mad’ when they told him the voices he ‘overheard’ at Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley and Schemengees Bar and Grill were only in his head.
‘Things have kind of gone downhill recently,’ Card told the Beast.
‘We tried to listen to him and tell him that nobody was talking about him.
‘Yesterday, as the story was unfolding, we prayed that Rob had nothing to do with this. But when we heard the two places where the shooting happened, my husband rushed home.’
