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 to him, they told The Post during a vigil Saturday night for the 18 victims.
Gary, 65, and Donna Totman, 63, learned online that Maxx Hathaway was fatally shot while playing pool with friends inside Schengees Bar and Grille, the second of two locations where gunman Robert Card went on a rampage.
Hathaway’s father, Rob, called the couple desperately hoping for an answer when the tragedy struck.
“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 the hardest time telling him. (Donna) finally tells him that she lost her son. Right after we hung up, he saw the news. He saw his son’s name in the news.”
Maxx Hathaway was killed in a mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, by shooter Robert Card. Gofundme Hathaway was fatally shot while playing pool with friends inside Schengees Bar and Grille.St. Thomas Episcopal Church
Keeping their lifelong friends from learning about his horrific disappearance from the news or social media was exactly the goal of the Totman family — who took Hathaway and his father on his first fishing trip.
“His father is broken. She was crying and very upset…They were heartbroken,” Gary Totman said of the family.
Rob Hathaway was initially concerned that his grandchildren would also be caught up in the bloodshed.
Maxx Hathaway had been at the bar with his wife, who is eight months pregnant with their third daughter, but he left moments before Card arrived because their daughter was getting “fussy.”
People attend a candlelight vigil to honor the victims of the Lewiston shooting on Saturday, Oct. 28. 2023. Getty Images The instruction was held in Lisbon Falls, Maine on Friday night. James Keivom
“The little boy was fussy and the mother brought the little boy home… The fussy little boy saved three lives — saved the mother, the unborn child and himself,” said Gary Totman.
“There is a young mother who has to raise her children without their father.”
‘This is so ridiculous’
The Totman family were among hundreds of mourners who packed the waterfront at Lisbon Falls for the 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 the priest named the 18 victims: Ronald Morin, 55; Peyton Brewer Ross, 40; Joshua Seal, 35; Brian MacFarlane, 41; Joseph Lawrence Walker, 57; Arthur Fred Strout, 42; Max Hathaway, 35; Stephen Vozella, 45; Thomas Ryan Conrad, 34; Michael R. Deslauriers II, 51; Jason Adam Walker 51; Tricia Asselin, 53; William Young, 44; Aaron Young, 14; Robert Violette, 76 and Lucille Violette, 73; William Frank Brackett, 44; and Keith Macneir, 64.
Androscoggin Sheriff Jason Chaloux is hugged as he attends a candlelight vigil to honor the victims of the Lewiston shooting on Oct. 28. 2023 in Lisbon, Maine. Getty Images
Soleil Gibbs, 35, went to high school with Maxx Hathaway and remembers him as “a really genuine person.”
“He’s one of those guys that it’s okay if you see him over the years. You will see it and go after it,” he told The Post.
Jo McDougall, 63, a Lisbon resident, worked at a Sears in the 1980s with victim Bob Violette, who was killed along with his wife, Lucy, at the Just-In-Time bowling alley.
“It’s a small enough group that we’re a family,” he said.
“He is a good man. It has an impact because this is so absurd.”
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 a youth league at the lane when the shooting began.
He bowls at the venue almost every morning during the week and is in a couples league with Lucy.
“He’s a hot-tempered, kind-hearted person. He is fond of bowling. He even considered turning pro at one point,” McDougall said.
Cards are seen entering a bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday, Oct. 25. 2023.AP
“Bowling was his life outside of his family.”
At the end of the vigil, dozens of mourners held hands and sang “Amazing Grace.”
Unanswered questions
The ceremony was held just 24 hours after police found Card’s body in an unlocked trailer at the Maine Recycling Corporation in Lisbon, where he once worked.
He appeared to be wearing the same clothes during Wednesday’s rampage and had two guns by his side.
Asked by The Post why Card shot himself at his former job, Lisbon Police Chief Ryan McGee said it was a mystery.
“I don’t know. He wasn’t fired. He quit, he left there…. It makes no sense to me at all,” McGee said.
“He obviously parked the car at the boat ramp and then avoided us for a mile to get to where he was. If he was going to kill himself, I don’t know why it wouldn’t have been done as soon as it got there.”
“Why go a mile away? I don’t know if it’s the pressure from all the law enforcement we have in the area. There really is nowhere else to go. The farthest he could go was where he was. He can’t go any further if that happens.”
Police swept and cleared the recycling plant twice during the two-day manhunt, but did not check other parts of nearby company land.
McGee defended his officers, saying they had diligently canvassed the area despite initially ignoring the bloody trailer.
“We didn’t miss out. We did go through the parking lot. There were officers going through the parking lot,” McGee said.
“But there are different types of searches. So you have an active search where you check a wide area and then you also have a grid pattern search. So you have to understand that you have a huge industrial park with various tractor trailers all over the place. The entire industrial section, the soft soil to check every crack will take several weeks. It won’t be overnight. People can also hide anywhere.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
