LISBON FALLS, Maine — Close friends of the father of a Maine mass shooting victim had to break the tragic news of his son’s death, they told The Post during a vigil Saturday night for the 18 victims.
Gary, 65, and Donna Totman, 63, discovered online that Maxx Hathaway was shot to death while playing pool with a friend inside Schemengees Bar and Grille, the second of two locations where gunman Robert Card unleashed the violence.
Hathaway’s father, Rob, called the couple desperately hoping for answers as the tragedy unfolded.
“We had to tell him because he didn’t know,” Gary told The Post.
“He called us and asked what was going on here and I had a hard time trying to tell him. (Donna) finally ended up telling him that she had lost her son. Immediately after she hung up, she saw the news. “She saw the name of her son on the news.”
Maxx Hathaway was killed in the mass shootings in Lewiston, Maine, carried out by shooter Robert Card. Gofundme Hathaway was fatally shot while playing pool with a friend inside Schemengees Bar and Grille.St. Thomas Episcopal Church
Preventing their lifelong friend from learning of their horrible loss through the news or social media was precisely the goal of the Totmans, who took Hathaway and her father on their first fishing trip.
“His dad collapsed. He was crying and very upset… They are heartbroken,” Gary Totman said of the family.
Rob Hathaway was initially concerned that his granddaughters had also been caught up in the bloodbath.
Maxx Hathaway had been at the bar with his wife, who is eight months pregnant with their third daughter, but left moments before Card arrived because their young daughter was getting “restless.”
People attend a candlelight vigil to honor the victims of the Lewiston shooting on Saturday, October 28, 2023. Getty Images The vigil was held in Lisbon Falls, Maine, on Friday night. James Keivom
“The child was restless and the mother took him home… The restless child saved three lives: he saved the mother, the baby in her stomach and herself,” Gary Totman said.
“There is a young mother who has to raise her children without their father.”
“This was so absurd”
The Totmans were among hundreds of mourners who packed the Lisbon Falls boardwalk for a solemn vigil, a day after police found Card, 40, dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Grieving locals held candles and bowed their heads as a pastor named the 18 victims: Ronald Morin, 55; Peyton Brewer Ross, 40; Seal of Joshua, 35 Brian MacFarlane, 41; Joseph Lawrence Walker, 57 years old; Arthur Fred Strout, 42; Maxx Hathaway, 35 years old; Stephen Vozella, 45 years old; Thomas Ryan Conrad, 34; Michael R. Deslauriers II, 51; Jason Adam Walker 51; Tricia Asselin, 53; William Young, 44; Young Aaron, 14; Robert Violette, 76, and Lucille Violette, 73; William Frank Brackett, 44; and Keith Macneir, 64.
Androscoggin Sheriff Jason Chaloux is hugged while attending a candlelight vigil to honor the victims of the Lewiston shooting on October 28, 2023 in Lisbon, Maine. fake images
Soleil Gibbs, 35, went to high school with Maxx Hathaway and remembered him as a “truly genuine person.”
“He’s one of those people who doesn’t care if you see him for years. You would see it and catch up,” she told The Post.
Jo McDougall, 63, of Lisbon, worked at Sears in the 1980s with victim Bob Violette, who was murdered along with his wife, Lucy, at the Just-In-Time bowling alley.
“It was a small enough group that we were a family,” he said.
“He was a good guy. He had an impact because this didn’t make sense.”
The shooter, Robert Card, was found dead by police on Friday. Lewiston Maine Police Department
Violette, who was recently inducted into the Maine Bowling Hall of Fame, was a longtime bowling instructor teaching at the youth league in the alley when the shooting began.
I bowled there most mornings during the week and was in a couples league with Lucy.
“He was a nice guy with an even-tempered character. He was passionate about bowling. He was even considering turning pro at one point,” McDougall said.
Card is seen entering the bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023.AP
“Bowling was kind of a life beyond his family.”
At the end of the vigil, dozens of mourners hugged each other and sang “Amazing Grace.”
Questions without answer
The ceremony came just 24 hours after police found Card’s body inside an open trailer at Maine Recycling Corporation in Lisbon, where he used to work.
He appeared to be wearing the same clothing he was wearing during Wednesday’s attack and had two firearms at his side.
When asked by The Post why Card shot himself at his old job, Lisbon Police Chief Ryan McGee said it was a mystery.
“I have no idea. He wasn’t fired. He quit, he got out of there… It doesn’t make any sense to me,” McGee said.
“He obviously parked that car at that boat ramp and then evaded us for a mile to get to where he was. If he was going to kill himself, I don’t know why he wouldn’t have done it by the time he got there.”
“Why go a mile away? I don’t know if it was pressure from all the law enforcement forces we had in the area. There really was nowhere else to go. The farthest he could go was where he was. I couldn’t go any further if that were the case.”
Police had swept and cleared the recycling plant twice during the two-day manhunt, but did not check another part of the company’s land nearby.
McGee defended his officers, saying they had diligently searched the area even though they initially neglected the bloody trailer.
“We did not fail. We passed through that parking lot. There were officers that went through that parking lot,” McGee said.
“But there are different types of searches. So you have an active search where you check broad areas and then you also have grid pattern searches. So you have to understand that you have a huge industrial park with multiple tractor trailers everywhere. The entire industrial part, that smooth stretch of land to check each of the cracks, would take a couple of weeks. It wouldn’t be overnight. Plus, people can hide anywhere.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn