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Manhunt Continues For Mass Shooting Suspect in Maine. Aired 1- 1:30p ET

Aired October 26, 2023 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[13:00:56]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: You're watching CNN NEWS CENTRAL. I'm Boris Sanchez in Washington. John Berman is live in Lewiston, Maine, where people are now entering their 17th hour sheltering in place as a manhunt for a mass killer intensifies.

A short time ago, the governor updated the death toll in last night's shooting rampage to 18. This happened over two locations about four miles apart, a bowling alley and a bar and grill in Lewiston. We understand another 13 people were wounded.

And now hundreds of officers are furiously searching for this 40-year- old army reservist named Robert Card. You see him in these images released by the sheriff's office pointing an AR-style rifle.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COL. WILLIAM ROSS, MAINE STATE POLICE: He should be considered armed and dangerous.

Based on our investigation, we believe this is someone that should not be approached. This is someone that should be -- if you come into any contact with this individual or someone that you think looks like this individual, you are to call 911.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: Yes, law enforcement made clear they consider him armed and dangerous.

Card is charged with eight counts of murder at this time. That reflects the number of victims that have been identified so far. Eight have been identified so far. That means 10, as of a short time ago, still needed to be identified.

Authorities do say that eight of the 18 were gunned down at the bar, which is right here behind me. And then the other seven died first at the bowling alley, which is about a 10-minute drive from here. There was a local councilperson who said that he can barely think about the scope of this tragedy.

It's just beginning to hit him, because his son works as a manager at the local bar. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEROY WALKER SR., SON MISSING AFTER SHOOTING: When you get anything that happens like this, you go empty. And there's just nothing, nothing you can do.

Your gut goes like a monster inside of you, and -- because it feels like it's going to fall off.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right, CNN's Shimon Prokupecz is following the latest on the manhunt.

Let's go first, though, to CNN's Pamela Brown, who's getting some new information about the shooter.

Pamela, what are you hearing?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN CHIEF INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, we have been communicating with the brother of Robert Card. And he says the family has actually been texting him, reaching out to him, telling him to surrender.

As you know, this manhunt is still ongoing as police try to bring him into custody. And the brother tells me that the family is doing everything it can to help police bring him into custody, saying the police have been given anything we can offer to facilitate their efforts, also saying that: "We have helped law enforcement in any way possible."

The brother would not confirm to me whether or not Robert Card has responded to those pleas from his family to surrender. But we have also spoken to his sister-in-law, who describes this as something that was an acute episode. She tells CNN that he, Robert Card, did not have a long history of mental health issues.

She said: "He is not someone who has had mental health issues for his lifetime or anything like that."

But what we're learning about him is that he's 40 years old. He's serving in the Army Reserves. He is described by former colleagues as a skilled marksman. In fact, one of them told us he was among the best shooters in his Army Reserve unit. He's also described as an outdoorsman who would be very comfortable in the woods.

But we know, John, in terms of what could have led to something like this, that, over the summer, he experienced some mental health issues, that he was at a training facility in Upstate New York. He started hearing voices, expressing that he wanted to harm fellow soldiers.

He was admitted to a mental health facility for a couple weeks and then released. And we know what has unfolded last night since then.

[13:05:03]

BERMAN: Let's just repeat that one more time. He reported hearing voices. He was then put in a mental health facility over the summer for some period of time and then released.

Any information at all, Pamela, on the terms of that release?

BROWN: Yes, and that is something that we're trying to gather. What were the terms?

Clearly, he had expressed an interest before being admitted to harming his fellow soldiers and hearing voices. But we don't know what happened after that. What we do know, though, John, is that he was released. He has a home on hundreds of acres of land in Maine, and he legally possessed multiple weapons.

We know that he was a firearms enthusiast and that he was able to be released and gain access to his firearms, but we're trying to learn more about why he was released, under what terms. Clearly, he would have been evaluated before he was released, and we just don't know what the circumstances are. But that is one of the key questions right now, John.

BERMAN: Right. Indeed it is, Pam. Stand by for a second, if you will.

I want to bring in Shimon Prokupecz for the latest on the manhunt.

And, Shimon, we just should note, I saw helicopters flying overhead just a short time ago. That has been a regular thing in this part of Maine. And even driving here from Portland, we were passed by several -- this county sheriff, that county sheriff, State Police of all kinds. I thought I saw a Massachusetts law enforcement vehicle all headed to this area.

So what's the latest?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, there's a lot of resources here to help the law enforcement here, the local law enforcement and the state law enforcement.

It's a lot of areas for them to cover. Here, where we are, we're in Lisbon. This is where he dumped the car. I'm going to show you here, John, here, this area, this is a boat launch last night after the shootings. This is where police found that white Subaru.

What happened after this? Unclear. They have been out here, police, searching through this area all day, all morning. They have been getting 911 calls. Neighbors are frantic. Residents here afraid for their lives are calling 911 if they hear a noise, if they see something suspicious.

And so the police are responding, and they are searching. We were with officers this morning during some of those searches, so definitely people here on edge. And part of what's making some of this kind of difficult for law enforcement is, you know, this is a wooded area.

We're not seeing them in any of the -- deep into the wooded area. The only searches that they have been doing out here today have been around homes, if people are calling 911, some of the cars, so some basic searches, but they're not going deep into the woods. We have seen helicopters flying.

But I think what Pam just reported, John, is really interesting. And I had not thought about that until I heard her report just now, the cell phones. If the family is communicating him or if he's receiving cell phone texts from them, law enforcement would know that.

And so they could ping his phone, which would then potentially tell them perhaps where he is. So that could be playing a big part of this and providing big keys to law enforcement, because I will say one thing to you, John, that I have found kind of interesting, is that things here are rather calm.

There is this shelter in place, don't leave your home. Businesses are closed, but we're not seeing that surge in law enforcement here. There's a lot of things going on behind the scenes, and there's all sorts of planning, but on the streets here, it's quiet, it's calm, and you're just not seeing that kind of surge that you normally see in a manhunt.

So it makes me wonder if they have some things going on behind the scenes, clearly, that we just don't know about.

BERMAN: Yes, certainly is possible.

Just a couple of things we will point out. All kinds of establishments have closed shop for the day, because they are concerned that there is this armed and dangerous alleged mass killer on the loose. T.D. Bank closed, what, 39 of its branches here. The Department of Motor Vehicles closed all up and down Maine. L.L. Bean, which is about 15 minutes from here, which is open on Christmas Day, is closed today out of security concerns.

So, people are obviously being careful.

Shimon, I want to talk about the river, the Androscoggin River, which is right behind you, this boat launch.

PROKUPECZ: Yes.

BERMAN: It does raise the possibility that this search is on land and on water.

PROKUPECZ: Yes, it is, but where -- so, what was happening earlier was, we did see helicopters kind of flying around the river, out on the other side here, across the road here.

A helicopter, our photographer here, Bob Crowley, saw them when he was here earlier, flying very, very low, just like over the water, just doing a flyby. So that is certainly something that would be interesting, right, if he got -- if he had a boat here and was able to get away by boat.

[13:10:03]

That would -- I mean, the level of planning would be pretty remarkable if that was the case. I mean, the question is, was this a random location for him, right? Did he just drive by here, see a spot and say, you know what, I'm going to dump this car here? But then where did he go from here?

And law enforcement just won't answer those questions right now, but this just seems -- it's sort of about 15 minutes or so from where you are. And it's a really interesting location. And, yes, the river is certainly a concern, and then the woods, but, so far, law enforcement has come up empty here.

They have not seen him here. There's not been any kind of sightings, just a lot of people who are on edge and nervous calling law enforcement. And they're doing their jobs. It's a small police department here, John, 17-person police department. And they have been the ones that have been out here all day and all morning doing the searches.

BERMAN: No, it's a great point.

I mean, this is a big area, a wooded area, a lot of wilderness here, but there's also a lot of people who live nearby. Lewiston is about 40,000 residents, but the greater Portland area, which Lewiston is part of, is about half-a-million people. So there are a lot of people in the near area who I think are very concerned as we stand here this afternoon.

Shimon Prokupecz, not far from where at least part of the search is taking place, really important information you're giving us on kind of a calm atmosphere surrounding this search, at least now. We will get back to you in a little bit.

Our thanks to Pamela Brown as well.

Boris, let's go back to you.

SANCHEZ: John, just moments ago at a State Department luncheon with the Australian prime minister, Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the mass shooting in Maine. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: As the secretary said, before I address why we are convened here today, I will address the tragic events that happened last night in Maine.

Last night, Lewiston became yet another community torn apart by senseless gun violence. Once again, routine gatherings, this time at a bowling alley and a restaurant, have been turned into scenes of horrific carnage. Doug and I mourn for those who were killed. We pray for those who were injured, and grieve with so many whose lives are forever changed and impacted by what happened.

The Biden/Harris administration will continue to provide full support to local authorities. And, as we gather details, we must continue to speak truth about the moment we are in.

In our country today, the leading cause of death of American children is gun violence. Gun violence has terrorized and traumatized so many of our communities in this country. And let us be clear. It does not have to be this way, as our friends in Australia have demonstrated.

And with that, then...

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: We should point out the vice president was recently named to oversee a newly established Office of Gun Violence Prevention that the White House set up as a response to so many mass shootings in the United States.

Let's get some perspective now on the manhunt with CNN senior law enforcement analyst Charles Ramsey, along with CNN senior national security analyst Juliette Kayyem.

Great to see both of you, and, unfortunately, again under these circumstances.

Chief Ramsey, let's start with the challenge of finding this suspect, the terrain, a rural, heavily wooded area. He's also someone with extensive military experience, a specialist with firearms.

CHARLES RAMSEY, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, it's quite challenging.

I mean, and that's assuming that he's still in that area, and I don't know if they know for sure that he is. But, having said that, they'd be setting up grid searches and very carefully going through this. Now it's daylight, so they're able to conduct a search. Last night, it was just very difficult, if not impossible. It was dark, very, very dark.

If you have been out in the woods, it's almost no light at all. And so that just adds to it. The fact that he is a marksman, a very skilled one, we know he has a very high-powered weapon with him. Perhaps he's got other weapons that he had in his car. That makes it incredibly dangerous for the men and women that are out there doing the search.

But they will systematically go through the area. And, hopefully, they're able to locate him before he's able to do harm to anyone else.

SANCHEZ: And, Juliette, investigators aren't just systematically going through the area. They're also looking at cell phone data, social media posts. They're interviewing close associates and family members.

[13:15:05]

How does that information potentially lead them to him?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes, so there's two reasons to do this kind of investigation or focusing on the sort of signal imprint. I mean, one is, where is he? And we're assuming that he's kept his

phone. So all of this talk about sort of, can they get pings or whatever, he clearly carefully planned this. He picks sites that become progressively more isolated. So, the last is sort of closer to a place where he can hide. He's survived close to 14 hours or however long without not getting caught.

We don't know if he had planned an isolated place to hide. So he may have also gotten rid of his phone. But all of those things, whether it's tracking on roads, it's drones, I mean, these areas around Maine are both some of the most beautiful parts of our country, but they -- you can put drones over them and at least look for movement or heat movement or anything else like that.

You can do the same over water and the lakes. The other reason why you want to do sort of check his computers and other things is, of course, motive. We don't know now. We were hearing about mental health issues. That's not a reason, right? I mean, there's lots of people with mental health issues that are not doing this.

There's, what was the triggering? Was there any hint of a triggering? Is it a loss of job? Was it something personal? Was it something political that he is absorbing? And that's what is important to know, because we don't know much about the victims. We -- and we kind of deserve to relatively soon.

I have been surprised how little information we have been getting at this stage. I think it's incumbent on law enforcement to provide that once families are notified, of course.

SANCHEZ: Notified, yes.

KAYYEM: But to figure out a reason for them to -- that he picked these places.

SANCHEZ: Sure.

Chief Ramsey, there's also concern about geography, because this area feasibly is within walking distance from the Canadian border. So how does that then complicate the search?

RAMSEY: Well, I mean, obviously they have notified Customs and Border Patrol, no doubt about that. But, yes, that's one more complication. I mean, you have got neighboring states, Vermont, New Hampshire. He's not that far from Massachusetts.

I mean, if he's mobile -- I mean, we were talking earlier about, did he have a boat ready at the location where he ditched the car? Or did he have a vehicle? I mean, we just don't know. And one thing they haven't done is provided us with any kind of real search area to kind of give us a sense of where they are searching.

So they have been holding a lot of information back. I understand, from an investigative standpoint, there is information that needs to be held back. I do think more information could be provided. People are afraid right now, and part of your responsibility is to try to do your best to assure them.

And, right now, I just don't see that.

SANCHEZ: Juliette, CNN has reporting that this...

KAYYEM: Can I...

(CROSSTALK)

KAYYEM: ... something?

SANCHEZ: Yes, go ahead.

KAYYEM: No, I mean, just the chief and I have been here in this position with you or someone else at CNN a lot.

Look, I mean, a community is being told to stay inside. This is not sustainable for a long period of time. And someone's going to have to make a decision in the next couple of hours that you're just making a risk calculation, if we don't find him, if they don't find him.

But you can't have populations traumatized by the shooting now traumatized by the surge, and not provide the kind of information about what in fact you're doing and what Chief Ramsey was saying. I think I have -- I struggle with these lockdowns, because you kind of don't want people living in fear.

But at some stage relatively soon, someone's going to have to make a decision that the calculus -- and this was what was done in the Boston Marathon. You have -- people have to also begin to mourn together, be a community again together, rather than hide.

And that's -- it's hard. I can't imagine what it's like living in that area now.

SANCHEZ: Yes, it's a delicate balance of providing the public with information and also protecting that information for the investigation.

Juliette Kayyem, Chief Charles Ramsey, we have to leave the conversation there. Thanks so much for the time.

RAMSEY: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Of course.

We still have much more on the breaking news out of Maine, and we're going to take a closer look at how hospitals there handled the chaos and care of many of the victims.

Plus, we're still watching news out of the Middle East, the Israeli military saying it carried out a targeted raid in Northern Gaza with tanks overnight. What that could signal about the next phase of the war.

That's still ahead on CNN NEWS CENTRAL. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:24:53]

BERMAN: All right, John Berman here in Lewiston, Maine.

You're looking at live pictures outside Schemengees Bar and Grille. That is where eight people were killed in these dual mass shootings that left 18 people dead.

And on the right-hand side of your screen, behind that tree there, you can see a group of law enforcement officials there. It's a mixture of state and federal officers there. There are officers there -- you can't really make them out in this picture -- wearing FBI vests. There you go. This is the first we have actually seen of the FBI, knowing that -- we have known that they're FBI on the scene here.

You can see them they're wearing those vests, so a mixture of federal and state law enforcement now engaged in this furious manhunt for 40- year-old Robert Card, who is now wanted specifically in connection with the deaths of eight people because they have only identified eight of the 18 victims so far. He is considered armed and dangerous. And they are casting a wide net throughout this area around Lewiston, Maine.

As I said, at this time, only eight of the 18 victims have been identified.

With me now is Brian Todd to get a sense, Brian, of what we know about those lives lots.

[13:25:04]

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, we're getting new information from medical officials in this area about just the volume of patients that were taken to these local emergency rooms.

And it was overwhelming. Dr. John Alexander, he's the chief medical officer of the Central Maine Healthcare Hospital. He said his hospital received 14 patients in the course of 45 minutes. Now, you can imagine that's incredible volume when you're talking about gunshot wounds coming in, in the span of 45 minutes.

This is what Dr. Alexander had to say about how his hospital had staffing in place to deal with all that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JOHN ALEXANDER, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, CENTRAL MAINE HEALTHCARE: We had approximately 100 team members who were off-duty come into the hospital to help ensure that we were able to care for not only the patients that we received from these -- horrible scene, but also take care of the patients that we had there.

(END VIDEO CLIP) TODD: And Dr. Alexander said that, of those 14 patients that were brought in, John, eight of them are still in the hospital. Three of them are in critical condition. They did have victims pass away at that hospital, but, again, just a sense of just the overwhelming volume that these hospitals had to deal with on such short notice.

BERMAN: It was so much and it was so quick that they all got there.

And they talked about how, at the beginning, there was the people there serving the people, but, by the end, they had even more medical professionals on site. They just kept on streaming in to help. Brian, thank you.

I want to bring in Meg Tirrell to talk more about this and the training that, sadly, Meg, so many people at hospitals around the country are now prepared for to deal with these mass shootings.

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John, I was just talking with three different surgeons, folks who focus on these sort of gunshot traumas.

I was talking with Dr. Megan Ranney, Dr. Chethan Sathya, and Dr. Joseph Sakran from Yale, Northwell Health and Johns Hopkins, all of whom said that, increasingly, they and their colleagues have to be prepared for these kinds of things. They're constantly talking among themselves in the E.R. community about how to deal with deal with these kinds of situations and gunshot wounds.

Now, we heard about just the speed with which so many patients came into that hospital, and that is something that all of these folks really reflected on as hero's work. They called it battlefield medicine, seeing 14 patients come in within 45 minutes.

And what we know about this medical center is that it's a Level III trauma center. Now, that's the third level down. Level I is the top. And what all of them said is that a Level III trauma center, essentially, their goal there is to stabilize patients, and then, if they can, get them to a higher-level trauma center, Level I, if possible, where they can then get even more comprehensive care.

Dr. Sakran was telling us about the golden hour, that 60 minutes when a gunshot wound victim comes into the hospital and needs to be stabilized. They really worry about bleeding and how quickly that can lead to real problems, so trying to stabilize them and then moving them out, but really saying it's chaotic to deal with this kind of thing even in the highest-level trauma centers.

They say 20 to 25 people can be needed for just one patient, John. So that gives you a sense of just the amazing work that they did.

BERMAN: It is amazing under awful circumstances. And when you speak to medical professionals who take part in something like this, many of them will tell you the thing that is most similar to this is combat medicine, field medicine, when doctors have to go and help out during wartime. This is what that is like.

Meg Tirrell, thank you so much for that.

Again, the latest from Lewiston, Maine, Boris, this manhunt very much under way for Robert Card, 40 years old, wanted now specifically in connection with the death of eight people, but there were 18 killed at these dual mass shootings here. And you have this community, the greater community of hundreds of thousands of people, very much on edge -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Yes, now the 17th hour of a shelter-in-place order.

John, we know you will stay on top of that story.

Still to come, though, we're going to take you live to Israel, where the IDF says that it carried out a targeted raid in Northern Gaza overnight. We have details straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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