(NewsNation) — A longtime neighbor of the suspect in two Maine shootings that killed at least 18 people is shocked at what happened, telling NewsNation that in all his years of knowing Robert Card, he never felt intimidated or saw red flags about the man.
“I never heard a negative thing” about Card or his family, neighbor Rick Goddard said Thursday on “CUOMO.”
Police have named Card the suspect in two shootings Wednesday night in Lewiston, Maine, that left at least 18 people dead. Multiple law enforcement agencies swarmed a home in Bowdoin on Thursday night to execute a search warrant, but were seen beginning to depart after several hours.
Card is a 40-year-old from Bowdoin and a U.S. Army reservist. He is a trained firearms instructor.
A police bulletin issued Wednesday night said Card has a history of mental health issues, including hearing voices, and threatened to shoot up a National Guard base in Saco, Maine. He is also reported to have spent two weeks in a mental health facility earlier this year.
Goddard said Card was most recently working with his father on their family farm.
“They like to take (steps) in keeping the land private so that they can hunt on it because of problems they’ve had with other people coming and doing things on their land that’s inappropriate, you know stealing, etc. and so they’ve posted their land to keep other people off of it. Other than that, (I’ve) never heard a negative thing,” Goddard said.
The shootings Wednesday night rocked the state’s second-largest city and left its residents in a state of shock and disbelief, including Goddard.
“It’s mind-blowing,” he said. “This is something that doesn’t happen here, and why would this ever happen here? It doesn’t make any sense.”
On Thursday afternoon, Maine State Police expanded a shelter-in-place order to include Androscoggin County and northern Sagadahoc County. Police advised residents to make sure their homes and vehicles were secure. Lewiston County Public Schools also announced there would be no class Friday due to the shelter-in-place order, buildings would not be open, and buses would not run. An earlier advisory covered the towns of Lewiston and Bowdoin.
Police asked anyone with any information about Card or the shootings to contact law enforcement.