Bill and Aaron Young were enjoying a father-son dinner at a local bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine, when horror struck.
Just before 7pm Wednesday night, a gunman walked into Just-in-Time Recreation, a bowling alley, and killed 7 people before heading to Schemengees Bar & Grille, where he shot and killed 8 others, authorities said.
Three others who were shot were rushed to local hospitals where they later died. Some children and young teenagers were at the bowling alley for the youth night.
“They’re just innocent people who went out for a night of bowling,” Bill Young’s cousin, Kim McConville, told NBC Boston. “This was an event for children. Who expects a shooter to go to a children’s event?”
Bill brought his son, Aaron, 14, a top shot putter, to Just-In-Time for a youth league competition, his brother Rob Young said Los Angeles Times and Reuters.
Authorities have identified the suspect as Robert Card, 40, of Bowdoin, who remains at large and is considered armed and extremely dangerous.
Robert Card.
Lewiston Maine Police Department/AFP via Getty Images
On Thursday, Rob and McConville spent the day trying to find any information about Bill and his son, who were last seen at the bowling alley, NBC Boston reports.
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She and other family members tried to call him on his cell phone, but there was no answer. They went to the hospital to try and see if Bill and Aaron were there. Rob said he became concerned as soon as he found out his brother and nephew were at the bowling alley where the shooting happened, he said times.
“We had a bad feeling from the beginning,” he said times.
He became more worried when Bill didn’t respond to his messages. After searching the Internet all night for answers, on Thursday morning Rob flew from Maryland to Lewiston to join his sister in searching for any sign of Bill and Aaron.
However, they were constantly fenced off, he said.
“It was just, ‘We’re sorry, we can’t tell you anything,'” Rob said times.
At 1 p.m., Maine State Police officers came to Bill’s house to deliver the news the family had been dreading: Bill and Aaron had been killed in a shooting.
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“I knew in my gut, but you can’t start grieving until the right person says yes, they’ve passed,” said Rob times.
Winthrop High School confirmed Aaron’s death in a statement Thursday.
“We are deeply saddened to learn of the deaths of Aaron Young, a freshman at WHS, and his father, Bill, during last night’s shooting,” the statement read.
The uncle of another high school student was killed in the shooting, the press release added.
Rob described his brother as a “man’s man” and “the life of the party,” he told times.
Bill’s 18-year-old daughter and son Aaron were “most important to him,” Rob told times.
Aaron wanted to be just like him, Young said.
“They were both the apple of each other’s eye,” Young said times reports.
A GoFundMe has been created for the Young family.
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Source: HIS Education