Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) and other officials hold a press briefing after the mass shooting suspect was found dead.
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00:00 Thank you very much for coming.
00:24 Excuse me, coming here on short notice.
00:29 I stand here tonight to simply report that the Maine State Police have located the body
00:34 of Robert Card in Lisbon.
00:37 He is dead.
00:39 I've called President Biden to inform him about this news.
00:43 I've informed Senator King, Senator Collins, Representative Pingree, and Representative
00:48 Golden.
00:51 Commissioner Sauschuk will describe the circumstances of that discovery in some detail in a few
00:58 moments, but this discovery is entirely thanks to the hundreds of local, county, state, and
01:06 federal law enforcement members from all over, and people from other states as well, people
01:13 who searched tirelessly to arrive at this moment.
01:18 And on behalf of all Maine people, I want to express my profound gratitude for their
01:25 unwavering bravery and determination and fortitude, and for the leadership of Lewiston Police
01:32 Chief St. Pierre.
01:42 Like many people, I'm breathing a sigh of relief tonight knowing that Robert Card is
01:49 no longer a threat to anyone.
01:53 I know there are some people, many people, who share that sentiment, but I also know
01:56 that his death may not bring solace to many.
02:02 But now is the time to heal.
02:06 And with this search concluded, I know that law enforcement continues to fully investigate
02:13 all the facts so we can bring what closure we can to the victims and their families.
02:21 And I ask that all Maine people continue to keep those families and all of the people
02:28 impacted by this tragedy in their thoughts and prayers.
02:35 Lewiston is a special place.
02:38 This isn't us.
02:40 Lewiston is a great place.
02:42 It's a close-knit community of fine people, people with a long history, a history of hard
02:49 work, of persistence, of faith, of opening its big heart to people everywhere.
03:00 And tonight, the City of Lewiston and the State of Maine begin to move forward on what
03:08 will be a long and difficult road to healing, but we will heal together.
03:18 Thank you, and again, my deepest gratitude, gratitude of all the people of the State of
03:23 Maine to these wonderful members of law enforcement who came from all over to help us solve this
03:31 crime and put closure on this investigation.
03:37 Robert Card is dead.
03:40 Now I'm going to turn it over to Commissioner Sawshuck.
03:45 Thank you very much, Governor.
03:52 We truly do appreciate all of your support.
03:56 I think it's incredibly important that the next person that speaks this evening is Lewiston's
04:03 Chief Law Enforcement Champion, and that is Dave St. Pierre.
04:07 Dave.
04:08 Thank you, Mike, and thank you, Governor, for allowing me this opportunity.
04:12 Bear with me, please.
04:13 I certainly did not have much time to prepare a speech here.
04:17 I want to say to everybody, thank you so much.
04:20 Our community can now breathe a sigh of relief, as the Governor stated, and I can't echo that
04:25 enough.
04:26 Our work, again, is not done here.
04:29 I was very elated tonight when I got the call from Commissioner Sawshuck advising me of
04:35 the revelation of what took place and that Mr. Card is deceased and no longer a threat
04:39 to our community or any other community.
04:43 I just don't want to forget the families that are grieving and will continue to grieve.
04:47 I don't want to forget the law enforcement officials that have worked tirelessly throughout
04:51 this whole event to come to a good conclusion.
04:55 Our men and women of the Lewiston Police Department, of all of our surrounding agencies, we have
05:00 with us Chief McGee here from Lisbon, where Mr. Card was found.
05:06 This is vitally important to all of us that this conclusion came to light tonight.
05:13 We're going to grieve for the families that lost loved ones here.
05:18 We're going to continue to work.
05:19 We're going to persevere.
05:21 We've become better people for it in terms of working together as teams.
05:27 We've learned a lot from some mistakes.
05:29 We've won a lot of accomplishments this evening.
05:32 Again, I wasn't really prepared for this on a Friday night at 10.30, but I'm very happy
05:37 to be here and very happy to say the threat is over.
05:41 Thank you.
05:42 [Reporter] Can you give us a reaction from your officers when they got the news of this
05:47 and your officers reporting these cases?
05:49 Sure.
05:50 So our officers are being notified now as we speak.
05:53 Some know obviously sooner than others.
05:55 There are many that are still home.
05:57 They're home with their families.
05:58 And I'm quite certain at this point in time, we all know about this.
06:02 This is something that all of our law enforcement personnel, ours and any surrounding community
06:08 has been paying very close attention to in awaiting positive news or good news.
06:14 And this is by far the best news we've had in quite some time.
06:17 Was there any belief at this time that the suspect was dead before finding him or did
06:26 this come as a brand new revelation that you never saw coming before this?
06:32 So our reality here is that the search has been extensive.
06:35 It's been thorough.
06:36 It's been nonstop since the minute we started speaking with you and long before that.
06:41 So all of these options are on the table as we knew.
06:44 We continue to search locations, in some cases multiple times.
06:50 And we will have more information about exactly how this went down.
06:54 We're going to have another briefing tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock.
06:57 And I would please encourage you to think about next steps from your end, information
07:03 that you would find important.
07:07 And I will say that this is not going to be a long Q&A this evening.
07:11 We wanted to make sure that we got this information out as fast as possible and as responsible
07:16 as possible.
07:17 And what I mean by that is that the time between the notification of the press release and
07:22 now, there wasn't a lot of details there.
07:24 There wasn't a lot of details there because we wanted to talk to the victim's families.
07:28 We wanted to say this is coming.
07:30 It's important that they heard that information as close to first as anybody else.
07:35 And you know who else we called was the family of the suspect.
07:39 And they lost a loved one in this scenario.
07:42 And there were many of that family that was very cooperative with us throughout.
07:46 So they deserve that phone call.
07:48 So we had those conversations tonight before joining you here.
07:52 We also got a chance to spend some time with the brothers and sisters of law enforcement
07:57 and our public safety partners that have been so incredibly helpful over the last few days,
08:02 to say the least.
08:03 So one second.
08:06 So right here, sir.
08:10 So at 745 this evening is when Mr. Card was located.
08:14 I won't give you an exact address.
08:16 It was near the river along Andrews Scoggin in Lisbon Falls was the actual location.
08:22 Ma'am, did you have a question?
08:24 Ma'am, did you have a question?
08:29 That all remains to be seen, right?
08:30 So the reality is that we found that body at 745 and it's 1025 now.
08:36 So there continues to be a lot of work that needs to be done here at the scene with the
08:40 medical examiner's office.
08:42 So there's a much, much more follow up to what happened.
08:45 But sir, did you have a question?
08:51 I won't be able to answer either one of those questions at this point.
08:55 Accomplices and things of that nature.
08:57 We've had no indication of that since the very beginning.
09:00 But as we've talked about before, these next steps are going to be gives us an opportunity
09:05 to do things as fast as we can in the sense that we want to provide closer and information,
09:10 but also slow things down a little bit because we need to look at video evidence.
09:14 We need to look at the various pieces of technology that are in play here and hopes that that
09:19 gives us some additional information around some of the things that you're going to be
09:22 concerned about.
09:23 Yes, ma'am.
09:24 Yeah, I'm happy to take a look at that information in hopes that I can get that back to you tomorrow
09:46 morning at 10 o'clock.
09:48 That remains to be seen.
09:49 Again, we have attorney generals that we need to work with and other individuals that are
09:54 in play here.
09:55 I'm going to take a couple more questions again, again, with the mindset that it's that
09:59 it's 10 o'clock tonight and we do want to come back tomorrow morning to have this going
10:03 right here.
10:04 So by this afternoon, were you just looking for remains or how did you make that decision?
10:13 Yeah, sure.
10:14 So I think that that was an ongoing conversations.
10:17 The minute we actually put that in place, we knew that that was an important decision.
10:22 Certainly from our perspective, it made complete sense to put that order in place immediately
10:27 based on the violent nature and the traumatic nature of these crimes.
10:32 And as things progressed over the next few days, since Wednesday to now, we've had a
10:38 lot of conversations with various town and city leadership, with the governor's office,
10:43 with chief St. Pierre, with business owners, with residents, and we have to have that balancing
10:48 act of pluses and minuses.
10:51 And we had that initial surge with those communities and those communities made perfect sense for
10:56 an order.
10:57 And as things tended to slow down, we didn't have any immediate threats.
11:00 We made the decision to back off that.
11:03 I would also just want to mention this because a fellow commissioner had asked me to do this
11:07 and I could walk out of here forgetting it.
11:10 But Commissioner Camuso said that and passed along that actually that hunting restriction
11:16 has been lifted as well.
11:18 So the resident hunting opportunity for tomorrow is open across the state of Maine to include
11:25 those four communities.
11:26 There's a lot of phone calls that she would receive around that.
11:28 But right here, ma'am.
11:29 - There are reports that you just found a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
11:30 Can you confirm that?
11:31 - Yes, I can confirm that.
11:32 It's an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
11:33 Did you have a question, ma'am?
11:34 - Yes, I'm sorry.
11:35 I just wanted to follow up.
11:36 You searched that area before, as I understand it.
11:37 Can you explain why you was only found this other time that you searched this area?
11:48 - I didn't state that we had searched that area before.
11:51 - Our reporting says that you searched this area before.
11:58 - As we have stated in the past, we try to use information that we can confirm one way
12:03 or the other.
12:04 So your reporting can say something one way or the other.
12:06 And that's fine.
12:07 We can talk about that again tomorrow morning.
12:08 But I think we're done taking questions for this evening.
12:11 Thank you very much for your patience.
12:12 And we will see you soon.
12:13 - Thank you very much.
12:14 - Thank you.
12:15 - Okay, we're all set.
12:16 - Appreciate it.
12:17 Let's go.
12:17 - Thank you.
12:17 - Thank you.
12:18 - Thank you.
12:18 [BACKGROUND CONVERSATIONS]
12:21 [BLANK_AUDIO]