Image for representation purpose only.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Eight people were reported killed in a mass shooting just south of Mexico City.

Local and state officials confirmed on May 12 that the attack occurred and there were some deaths, but didn’t give the number of victims. Local media reported that eight people died.

The government of the state of Morelos, which borders Mexico City, said the attack occurred late on May 11 in Huitzilac.

The forested mountain township has been plagued by illegal loggers, kidnappers, and drug gangs, in part because it provides the closest rural hideout near the capital.

The town’s mayor, Rafael Vargas, called the attack “a terrible violent act” and said that “several people” were killed.

“Right in the centre of town, several people were attacked and killed,” Mr. Vargas said. Apparently aware of the town’s rough reputation, Mr. Vargas said “The violence should stop. We will denounce all types of slander that seek to damage our people.”

Lewiston, United States:

Police in Maine said Saturday that the man who gunned down 18 people at a bar and a bowling alley and later committed suicide, suffered serious mental health issues, but was able to buy weapons legally because he had never been forcibly committed to treatment.

The body of Robert Card, a 40-year-old army reservist, was discovered Friday night inside a tractor trailer near a recycling center where he used to work, said Maine public safety commissioner Mike Sauschuck. Card had shot himself.

Investigators are still struggling to determine Card’s motive for carrying out Wednesday’s massacre in the town of Lewiston.

However, Mike Sauschuck said that Card had reportedly been hearing voices and suffering from paranoia.

“Clearly there’s a mental health component to this,” Mr Sauschuck told reporters.

Investigators found a “paper-style” note that Card had left to a loved one which contained a password to his phone and bank account information, Mr Sauschuck said, adding that the note had the tone of a suicide letter.

Card was found in possession of three weapons, one of them a long gun, all purchased legally because he had never been forcibly committed to a mental institution.

Despite the apparently clear mental health issues and a reportedly recent psychiatric evaluation undergone by Card, “a background check is not going to ping that this individual was prohibited,” Mr Sauschuck added.

A ‘coward’s way out’

The discovery of Card’s body ended a massive two-day manhunt, which had this quiet city of 38,000 people on lockdown with businesses and schools closed and residents terrified.

Sauschuck acknowledged the help Card’s family provided to the investigation, saying among the first people to call the police and identify the suspect were his family members. “This family has been incredibly cooperative with us,” he said.

Lewiston finally breathed a sigh of relief with businesses beginning to open and people appearing on the streets Saturday.

Guadalupe Hursch, 49, a stay-at-home mother said she was happy that the ordeal was over. “Relieved. Relieved,” Hursch told AFP, adding that she also felt sorry for Card’s parents.

A local resident by the name of Danica who was buying coffee at a drive-in said she was “very afraid” in the aftermath of the shooting and was now happy Card was dead, but at the same time wished he had first been brought to justice.

“I think he took the coward’s way out of doing it by suicide,” Danica, who declined to give her last name, told AFP. “I think he should be held accountable for his crimes.”

She added: “It’s a very terrible thing and it’s going to take a long time to get back up to be where we were before.”

In a statement issued shortly after Card’s body was discovered Friday night, President Joe Biden vowed to renew efforts to curb gun violence in the United States.

“Americans should not have to live like this,” Joe Biden said. “I will continue to do everything in my power to end this gun violence epidemic.”

President Biden said the shooting brought “a tragic two days — not just for Lewiston, Maine, but for our entire country.”

Authorities on Friday identified the victims, ranging from a husband and wife in their 70s, to a 14-year-old boy killed alongside his father.

This latest shooting is one of the deadliest in the United States since 2017, when a gunman opened fire on a crowded music festival in Las Vegas, killing 60 people

Mass shootings are alarmingly common in the United States, a country where there are more guns than people and where attempts to clamp down on their spread are always met with stiff resistance.

The United States has recorded over 500 mass shootings this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a non-governmental organization that defines a mass shooting as four or more people wounded or killed.

Efforts to tighten gun controls have for years run up against opposition from Republicans, staunch defenders of the constitutional right to bear arms.

The political paralysis endures despite widespread outrage over recurring shootings.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

An unidentified shooter points a gun while entering Sparetime Recreation in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023. 
| Photo Credit: AP

At least 22 people were killed and 50 to 60 wounded on Wednesday in mass shootings at multiple locations including a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston, Maine, U.S., NBC News reported, citing a Lewiston police source.

The Lewiston Police Department on Facebook identified a person of interest in the mass shooting at the bar and bowling alley as Robert Card, 40, saying he should be “considered armed and dangerous.”

Police earlier posted three photographs of an unidentified suspect pointing what appeared to be a semi-automatic rifle, in addition to a picture of a white SUV, asking the public for help in identifying either.

The Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office also posted pictures of the suspect, a bearded man in a brown hoodie jacket and jeans holding a rifle in the firing position.

“There is an active shooter in Lewiston,” Maine state police said previously on the social media platform X. “We ask people to shelter in place. Please stay inside your home with the doors locked. Law enforcement is currently investigating at multiple locations.”

The Sun Journal, citing a Lewiston police spokesperson, reported shootings at three separate businesses: the Sparetime Recreation bowling alley, Schemengees Bar & Grille Restaurant, and a Walmart distribution centre.

The bowling alley is about four miles (6.5 km) north of the bar, and the distribution centre is about a mile and a half (2.5 km) south of the bar.

The Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston issued a statement saying it was “reacting to a mass casualty, mass shooter event” and coordinating with area hospitals to take patients.

Lewiston is part of and about 35 miles (56 k.m.) north of Maine’s largest city, Portland.

Lewiston, a former textile hub and town of 38,000 people in Androscoggin County, is located in southern Maine about midway between the state capital, Augusta, and Portland, the state’s most populous city

President Joe Biden has been briefed and will continue to receive updates, a U.S. official said in Washington.

The President spoke by phone individually to Maine Governor Janet Mills, Senators Angus King and Susan Collins, and Congressman Jared Golden about the shooting in Lewiston and offered full federal support in the wake of the attack, the White House said.

If the death toll of 22 is confirmed, the massacre would be the deadliest in the United States since at least August 2019, when a gunman opened fire on shoppers at an El Paso Walmart with an AK-47 rifle, killing 23 in a shooting that prosecutors branded an anti-Hispanic hate crime, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

The 22 fatalities would also be on par with the number of homicides that normally occur in Maine in any given year. The number of annual homicides in the state has fluctuated between 16 and 29 since 2012, according to Maine State Police.

The number of U.S. shootings in which four or more people were shot has surged since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, with 647 occurring in 2022 and 679 projected to occur in 2023, based on trends as of July, according to data from the archive.

The deadliest U.S. mass shooting on record is the massacre of 58 people by a gunman firing on a Las Vegas country music festival from a high-rise hotel perch in 2017.