Autopsy suggests Maine mass shooter was alive for most of massive 2-day search

The Army reservist who opened fire inside at a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston, Maine, before disappearing was alive and possibly on the run during a good portion of the massive search that followed, according to a conclusion from the state medical examiner’s office released Friday.

Robert Card died from a self-inflicted gunshot that “likely” happened eight to 12 hours before the discovery of his body, based on a time-of-death analysis, officials said. The conclusion was announced a week after his body was discovered in the back of a tractor-trailer on the property of his former employer at a recycling center.

In the wake of the Oct. 25 shootings, which killed 18 people and wounded 13 more, tens of thousands of area residents sheltered at home behind locked doors as hundreds of law enforcement officers scoured the area looking for Card. He fled in a vehicle that was later found abandoned on a waterfront in a nearby town.

Law enforcement agencies came under scrutiny for not finding Card's body earlier under the assumption that he killed himself in the hours just after the shootings and that his body was overlooked in earlier searches.

But the time of death provided by the state's chief medical examiner, Dr. Mark Flomenbaum, suggests Card, 40, was alive and potentially on the move for more than 24 hours after the killings.

The medical examiner's office, however, said Card suffered from a condition in which his heart emptied of blood after the gunshot wound, affecting the way the blood settled in his body and potentially making the time of death less certain, according to Lindsey Chasteen, office administrator of medical examiner's office in Augusta.

A state police spokesperson had no comment Friday.