Shootings are a grim part of life in the US – but it’s clear this is one of the big ones
It was just after 8pm when I saw the first US shooting update, a tweet from the local police force: “There is an active shooter in Lewiston. We ask people to shelter in place.”
Filters are required when monitoring shootings in America. Messages like this pop up several times a week.
Very often the ‘shooter’ is caught without incident. Perhaps a domestic situation, quickly resolved. Or gang related. Sometimes ‘just’ a few people are injured. Maybe a ‘few’ killed. Such is the grim regularity of all this.
“Gun incidents are part of life in America,” a Sky News reporter writes. “My nine-year-old and five-year-old had their regular ‘intruder drill’ at school this week. The five-year-old doesn’t know what it’s all about. The nine-year-old does.”
I heard he and his best mate talking about it the other day. How is that right? Kids taking about how a man with a gun could come into their school.
Take a look at this chart for an idea of how common shootings are. It’s everywhere on the internet.
It was clear quickly this time that this latest shooting was one of the big ones, the ones America really dreads.
So, here are updates on the shootings in Maine, US.
‘I just remember people sobbing and crying’
A witness has recalled how people hid behind benches and tables, and even inside the machinery at the bowling alley, as the gunman sprayed bullets at bowlers.
Riley Dumont told ABC News she heard a loud bang before her father, an ex-police officer, rushed them to a corner and piled up tables in front of them.
“I was laying on top of my daughter. My mother was laying on top of me,” she told the network.
“It felt like it lasted a lifetime,” she added. “I just remember people sobbing and crying.”
Another witness, Meghan Hutchinson, told ABC News she and her group “were very scared” and barricaded in the bowling alley, while another, Zoe Levesque, said she was grazed by a bullet.
“I never thought I’d grow up and get a bullet in my leg,” she said, describing how she feared she may not make it out alive.
Sunrise in Maine, as police search continues
It’s coming up to 8am in Maine, where police are hunting for a person of interest in the mass shootings feared to have left up to 20 people dead.
This was the Lewiston skyline at dawn.
We’re expecting an update from officials in under three hours’ time.
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