LEWISTON, Maine — Shocked and fearful Maine residents kept to their homes Friday as hundreds of heavily armed police and FBI agents searched intensely for Robert Card, an Army reservist authorities say fatally shot 18 people at a bowling alley and a bar in the worst mass killing in state history.
Much of Thursday's search focused on a large property belonging to one of Card's relatives in rural Bowdoin, where trucks and vans full of armed agents from the FBI and other agencies eventually surrounded a home. Concerned locals said Card could have the upper hand in navigating the rural, wooded area that he knows well.
The Cards have lived in Bowdoin for generations, neighbors said. Various members of the Card family own hundreds of acres in the area.
Richard Goddard, who lives on the road where the search took place, knows the Card family. Robert Card knows the terrain well, Goddard said.
“This is is his stomping ground. He grew up here,” he said. “He knows every ledge to hide behind, every thicket.”
Card and anyone else inside the home were repeatedly ordered to surrender on Thursday. But hours later, after repeated announcements and a search, authorities moved off and it was still unclear whether Card had ever been at the location, state police said.
“You need to come outside now with nothing in your hands. Your hands in the air,” police said through a loudspeaker. In most instances when police…
