BREAKING NEWS: Maine Gov. Janet Mills, Officials Hold Press Briefing After Mass Shooting Suspect Found Dead

Forbes Breaking News

Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) and other officials hold a press briefing after the mass shooting suspect was found dead.

Transcript

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.

12:18 - Thank you.

12:18 [BACKGROUND CONVERSATIONS]

12:21 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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