LEWISTON, Maine — For the first time in days, people in this shell-shocked community were able to gather in familiar spaces without the fear of encountering a mass shooter on the loose.
One of those places was Fran’s Restaurant, a popular breakfast spot that opened Saturday for the first time in three days. Manager Linda Tucker welcomed regulars the morning after Robert Card, the suspect in the two mass shootings that claimed 18 lives Wednesday, had been found dead.
“We weren’t sure if we were going to open when they lifted this shelter-in-place order. When he was found we just said we had to open,” Tucker said.
Her relief is tempered by concern for those who lost loved ones, and the surreal notion that the unthinkable could happen here.
“It’s a relief. But then also you think it isn’t going to happen here. It still puts you on guard to know that something like that could happen in a small little town like this.”
Local resident Marc Mailhot met a group of friends at Fran’s because he thought it was important for them to decompress after days of lockdown and emotional trauma.
“I think what Maine is going to need, and what the community is going to need, is time,” Mailhot remarked.
“Families are going to need the time and the respect and the anonymity to be what they need to be in their homes, for as long as they need it.”
The lockdown, and the manhunt for the presumed shooter, had put people here on edge for days. A family seated in a different corner at Fran’s said they had spent the past few days glued to their phones wondering what would happen next.
“It was like a thunderstorm without the thunder. We were waiting for something to happen, and we just kept waiting and kept waiting and everyone was living in fear,” Josianna Spearman said.
“We didn’t want to bring our dogs on walks or look out the front door even because the only thing we saw were helicopters going over our house.”
Her sister Lanyha Spearman, sitting across the table, said the city had been gripped by an eerie calm after the mass killings. That was compounded by weather that seemed unusual for late October.
“It was sunny and warm, and it seemed there was no breeze. The leaves on the trees were still.”
She glanced at the television Friday night to see a breaking news alert that Card’s body had been found.
“The TV was on, and we looked over, and the title was he was found dead. You literally could almost see our bodies move,” Spearman said as she mimicked the sound of exhaling. “We said, ‘Oh my gosh it’s over! It’s done!’”
Spearman said she could see the city starting to come back to life on Saturday.
“I was driving just today, and people were waving ‘Hi!’ through the windows of their cars. You could just feel the love.”
The Spearman sisters’ mother, Jackie Tremblay, said the incident was the latest reminder to her that there aren’t enough mental health services available in America.
“The thing he did was something a normal person would ever do. I feel he suffered from a mental illness. I don’t think he had the right medical treatment.”
Tremblay said the community was still trying to recover from the effects of COVID-19 when this tragedy unfolded.
“We need to push through this event because it’s not a normal thing. It’s not going to happen every time. We all just have to be cautious of our surroundings, but we still have to live our lives too.”
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Fran’s customer William Edwards sat in his car in the parking lot watching the latest press conference on his phone.
“I've been watching my phone for the last three days, I'm not able to get off it, wondering what's going on,” said Edwards.
He’s spent the past three days trying to explain the situation to his children while trying to make sense of it himself.
“He said he was going to do something to hurt people before, and it should’ve been taken care of, and it wasn’t.”
It’s clear the road back from this city’s collective trauma will be a long one.
“We all know somebody that was injured or somebody who knows somebody that was injured. We were all connected.”