THE LEWISTON SHOOTINGS

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>October 25 2023 was just an ordinary night in Lewiston a small working class city of 37000 in central Maine. Friends and families had gathered to do what they loved to do with the people they wanted to be with at a bowling alley called Just-in-Time Recreation Center and Schemengees a popular sports bar and restaurant. They felt immune from the violent crime that seemed to wrack the rest of the country in a state that the FBI had just named the safest in America. </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)> </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Then Robert Card II a deeply paranoid Army Reserve soldier walked into both places with a high-powered rifle and opened fire killing 18 people and wounding 13 more. He then fled to a third location where according to the evidence and the testimony of his best friend he likely planned to lay in wait and kill his ex-co-workers when they came to work the next morning. </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)> </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>The tragedy is that the numerous red flags he had raised in the months before weren't enough to stop him before he carried out his terrible plan. A combination of watered-down gun control laws and law enforcement and military negligence made sure of that. </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)> </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>In </span><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>THE LEWISTON SHOOTINGS - An All-American Tragedy</strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)> author and award-winning journalist Robert Conlin traces the shootings that deeply scarred a community that thought it was the last place on earth where a mass shooting would take place. Never again could anyone in Lewiston or the state of Maine say It will never happen here. </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Because it did. </span></p><p><br></p>