Amid mass shooting manhunt, Mainers are jittery, stoic — and often armed
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a...are-jittery-stoic-and-often-armed/ar-AA1iUPRJ
Amanda Plummer was driving home from a restaurant in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday evening when the street was suddenly filled with police cars and ambulances near Schemengees Bar and Grille.
Plummer first thought there had been a bad traffic accident. But then her sister started frantically texting, telling her a mass killer was on the loose after a shooting rampage at Schemengees and a nearby bowling alley.
“I was a nervous wreck,” said Plummer, 43, a dental assistant.
It took her 90 minutes to finally reach her home in Lisbon, normally a 25-minute drive. Once there, she, her husband and their 22-year-old son loaded two AR-15s and three other guns and sat on the porch until late into the night, facing the long dirt driveway to their home on 17 acres of wooded land.
“If we heard anything, we were ready,” said Plummer, who finally went to bed at about 4 a.m.
For more than 24 hours on Wednesday and Thursday, much of mid-coast Maine was gripped by the drama of a massive manhunt for Robert Card, a U.S. Army reservist charged in the nation’s deadliest mass killing of 2023. Authorities said 18 people had been killed and 13 were wounded.