Hundreds Of Male Buru Police Related To Mass Shooting In Maine United States

Illustration. (Wikimedia Commons/Tony Webster)

JAKARTA - Hundreds of police searched the city of Lewiston and the area around Maine State, to search for a man linked to a mass shooting at a bar and a media outlet, as news outlets reported the death toll ranged from 16 to 22 people, while dozens others were injured.

Officials said there were many victims, but refused to give the exact figure.

State and local police identified Robert R. Card (40) as an interested person in this case, after previously posting on Facebook photos of a man holding a semi-automatic rifle.

Images from one of the crime scenes on Wednesday showed a masked man in a brown hoodie and jeans, holding a gun in a shooting position.

"We have hundreds of police officers working across the state of Maine to investigate the case to find the Card, which is the wanted person," Maine Public Security Commissioner Mike Sauschuck told a news conference.

Several media reported that Maine's law enforcement bulletin identified Card as a trained firearms instructor and a US Army reserve member who recently reported he had mental health problems, including hearing voices. He is also said to have threatened to shoot the National Guard base.

"Card has also reportedly been put into a mental health facility for two weeks during the summer of 2023 and later released," the Maine Information & Analysis Center said.

Bars and gyms are about four miles (6.5 km) away in Lewiston, a former textile center and city of 38,000 people in Androscoggin County about 35 miles (56 km) north of Maine's largest city, Portland.

Previous media reports said there was a third shooting location at Walmart's distribution center. However, Walmart later issued a statement to local media saying no shootings had occurred on their property.

Meanwhile, the Maine Central Medical Center in Lewiston said it was "acting against mass casualties, mass shooting events" and coordinated with local hospitals to accept patients.

In Washington DC., an official said President Joe Biden had been briefed and would continue to receive the latest information.

President Biden spoke by telephone privately to Maine Governor Janet Mills, Senators Angus King and Susan Collins as well as members of the Jared Golden Congress on the shooting at Lewiston, offering federal full support following the attack, the White House said.

If the death toll of 22 people is confirmed, the shooting will be the deadliest in the United States since at least August 2019, when a gunman opened fire on a buyer at Walmart El Paso with an AK-47 rifle that killed 23 people. Prosecutors branded it an anti-Hispanic hate crime, according to the Arms Violence Archives.

The 22 deaths are also equivalent to the number of murders that usually occur in Maine in certain years. The number of annual murders in the state fluctuates between 16 and 29 since 2012, according to the Maine State Police.

The number of shootings in the US involving four or more people has soared since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, with 647 cases occurring in 2022 and 679 cases expected to occur in 2023, based on trends in July, according to data from the archives.

The deadliest mass shooting ever recorded in the US was the shooting of 58 people by an armed man who opened fire on the country Las Vegas music festival from a high-level hotel in 2017.