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‘Find the failures and plug the holes’: Families, survivors of Lewiston shooting testify before fact-finding commission – The Boston Globe

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‘Find the failures and plug the holes’: Families, survivors of Lewiston shooting testify before fact-finding commission – The Boston Globe


Many said confirmations from law enforcement that their loved ones had been killed came too late, following hours of worry and, for some, after they had already heard the news from family and friends.

Elizabeth Seal, whose husband, Joshua Seal, was killed at Schemengees Bar and Grille, said the deaf community was especially excluded from early communications, including alerts that the shooting had taken place.

“I was just driving around looking for my husband. I was making calls to the hospitals,” Seal, who is deaf, signed, her words translated by interpreter Grace Cooney. Eventually, Seal made it to a reunification center officials had set up, but “there were no interpreters there.”

She called Joshua Seal a “family man” who was “continuously busy,” and who dedicated his life to advocating for better access for the deaf community.

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“Ironically, all these issues regarding access came to life on this fateful day,” Seal said.

The seven-member commission, made up of legal experts and mental health professionals, is tasked with reviewing law enforcement’s response to and the events leading up to the Oct. 25 shooting, when Robert Card II killed 18 people — the deadliest mass shooting in Maine’s history. Those close to Card warned local law enforcement that he was behaving erratically in the months before the attack.

Seal and others said law enforcement seemed to ignore clear warning signs about Card, an army reservist. Last week, officials from the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Department testified that they behaved appropriately in the months preceding the deadly attacks.

Kathleen Walker, widow of Jason Walker, told the commission it would learn, through the sheriff’s testimony and testimonies expected from members of the Army next month, that there were “several opportunities” to take Card’s firearms away.

“I need all of you as a commission to find the failures and plug the holes,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

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Walker recalled watching her husband charge at Card, attempting to take his gun when it appeared to jam, before being shot in the head. Card fired twice more, she said.

Despite being there, Walker said she did not get confirmation of her husband’s death for 15 hours, when local police pulled up to her home.

All those who testified praised the work of Maine’s Victim Witness Services unit, which has provided support to impacted individuals.

Commission Chair Daniel E. Wathen, former chief justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, has said he hopes to have a written report of the tragedy completed by May. At the body’s first meeting, he said that “certainly is a daunting task, but it is a task that each of us owe to the people of Maine.”

The commission’s third meeting comes days after Maine Governor Janet Mills’ State of the State address, where she pledged $5 million for a fund to pay for the long-term medical needs of those injured in the shootings.

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Last week, Mills and Attorney General Aaron Frey proposed emergency legislation that would give the commission subpoena power to request documents, compel individuals to testify, and appeal to the state Superior Court should anyone refuse to comply.

The Maine House of Representatives and Senate each sent the bill to the judiciary committee, which held a public hearing on Monday and a work session Wednesday, which lasted more than 6 hours as committee members weighed the urgency of the commission’s investigation with concerns about government oversight. After hours of deliberation and multiple breaks to caucus, the committee unanimously voted in favor of the bill, with amendments including a July 1 sunsetting of the commission’s subpoena power and a note that the decision to grant said power should not be viewed as precedential by future legislatures.

Mills’s and Frey’s emergency bill would go into effect immediately upon receiving two-thirds vote from Maine lawmakers. It’s not yet clear when the bill will get a formal vote in the state Congress.

Mills announced the formation of the commission just days after the shooting, as questions continued to mount about how multiple warnings about Card did not prevent him from carrying out his assault on a bowling alley and a bar in Maine’s second-largest city.

Sheriff Joel Merry told the board last week that his deputies were warned not to engage with Card directly during wellness checks and “believed that the matter with Mr. Card had been resolved.”

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He and four other members of the department said they acted in line with protocol and had limited legal authority to take him into custody.

Merry said that if there were any action he or his team could take to bring back those killed in Lewiston, they would do it, “no question, no hesitation.”

“But there isn’t,” the sheriff said.

Thursday’s meeting begins at 8:30 a.m. in room 101 of the Deering government building, located at 90 Bloom Lane in Augusta. It will also be livestreamed via Zoom.


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Daniel Kool can be reached at daniel.kool@globe.com. Follow him @dekool01.





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Program doubles enrollment, expands to more Maine schools

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Program doubles enrollment, expands to more Maine schools


Central Maine Power is expanding its Union Trade Internship Program in 2026, increasing opportunities for Maine high school students to gain hands-on experience in the electric utility industry.

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A sign for Central Maine Power, a subsidiary of Avangrid

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CMP expands union trade internship program for Maine students

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Central Maine Power is expanding its Union Trade Internship Program in 2026, increasing opportunities for Maine high school students to gain hands-on experience in the electric utility industry.

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Updated: 11:47 AM EDT Apr 14, 2026

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Central Maine Power is expanding its Union Trade Internship Program in 2026, increasing opportunities for Maine high school students to gain hands-on experience in the electric utility industry.Now in its second year, the 10-week paid program will double enrollment, expand to additional schools in central and southern Maine, and broaden training to include both line and substation operations. The program will serve 10 students ages 16 and older, selected through a competitive recruitment and interview process in partnership with participating schools.The internship runs from June to August and includes classroom instruction at CMP’s training center in Farmingdale, along with supervised field experience alongside union crews. Students will learn foundational skills such as pole climbing, bucket truck operation, breaker and transformer maintenance, and the safe use of tools and protective equipment. Participants will not work on live electrical wires.The program is aimed at strengthening the workforce pipeline for skilled trades while giving students early exposure to careers in the energy sector and supporting partnerships between CMP and Maine schools.

Central Maine Power is expanding its Union Trade Internship Program in 2026, increasing opportunities for Maine high school students to gain hands-on experience in the electric utility industry.

Now in its second year, the 10-week paid program will double enrollment, expand to additional schools in central and southern Maine, and broaden training to include both line and substation operations. The program will serve 10 students ages 16 and older, selected through a competitive recruitment and interview process in partnership with participating schools.

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The internship runs from June to August and includes classroom instruction at CMP’s training center in Farmingdale, along with supervised field experience alongside union crews. Students will learn foundational skills such as pole climbing, bucket truck operation, breaker and transformer maintenance, and the safe use of tools and protective equipment. Participants will not work on live electrical wires.

The program is aimed at strengthening the workforce pipeline for skilled trades while giving students early exposure to careers in the energy sector and supporting partnerships between CMP and Maine schools.

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Carbon removal project supports Maine’s blue economy, broader marine health

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Carbon removal project supports Maine’s blue economy, broader marine health


Oceans absorb roughly 25 to 30 percent of the carbon dioxide (CO2) that is released into the atmosphere. When this CO2 dissolves in seawater, it forms carbonic acid, making the water more acidic and altering its chemistry. Elevated levels of acidity are harmful to marine life like corals, oysters, and certain plankton that rely on calcium carbonate to build shells and skeletons.

“As the oceans absorb more CO2, the chemistry shifts — increasing bicarbonate while reducing carbonate ion availability — which means shellfish have less carbonate to form shells,” explains Kripa Varanasi, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “These changes can propagate through marine ecosystems, affecting organism health and, over time, broader food webs.”

Loss of shellfish can lead to water quality decline, coastal erosion, and other ecosystem disruptions, including significant economic consequences for coastal communities. “The U.S. has such an extensive coastline, and shellfish aquaculture is globally valued at roughly $60 billion,” says Varanasi. “With the right innovations, there is a substantial opportunity to expand domestic production.”

“One might think, ‘this [depletion] could happen in 100 years or something,’ but what we’re finding is that they are already affecting hatcheries and coastal systems today,” he adds. “Without intervention, these trends could significantly alter marine ecosystems and the coastal economies that rely on them over time.”

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Varanasi and T. Alan Hatton, the Ralph Landau Professor of Chemical Engineering, Post-Tenure, at MIT, have been collaborating for years to develop methods for removing carbon dioxide from seawater and turn acidic water back to alkaline. In recent years, they’ve partnered with researchers at the University of Maine Darling Marine Center to deploy the method in hatcheries.

“The way we farm oysters, we spawn them in special tanks and rear them through about a two-week larval period … until they’re big enough so that they can be transferred out into the river as the water warms up,” explains Bill Mook, founder of Mook Sea Farm. Around 2009, he noticed problems with production of early-stage larvae. “It was a catastrophe. We lost several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of production,” he says.

Ultimately, the problem was identified as the low pH of the water that was being brought in: The water was too acidic. The farm’s initial strategy, a common practice in oyster farming, was to buffer the water by adding sodium bicarbonate. The new approach avoids the use of chemicals or minerals.

“A lot of researchers are studying direct air capture, but very few are working in the ocean-capture space,” explains Hatton. “Our approach is to use electricity, in an electrochemical manner, rather than add chemicals to manipulate the solution pH.”

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The method uses reactive electrodes to release protons into seawater that is collected and fed into the cells, driving the release of the dissolved carbon dioxide from the water. The cyclic process acidifies the water to convert dissolved inorganic bicarbonates to molecular carbon dioxide, which is collected as a gas under vacuum. The water is then fed to a second set of cells with a reversed voltage to recover the protons and turn the acidic water back to alkaline before releasing it back to the sea.

Maine’s Damariscotta River Estuary, where Mook farms is located, provides about 70 percent of the state’s oyster crop. Damian Brady, a professor of oceanography based at the University of Maine and key collaborator on the project, says the Damariscotta community has “grown into an oyster-producing powerhouse … [that is] not only part of the economy, but part of the culture.” He adds, “there’s actually a huge amount that we could learn if we couple the engineering at MIT with the aquaculture science here at the University of Maine.”

“The scientific underpinning of our hypothesis was that these bivalve shellfish, including oysters, need calcium carbonate in order to form their shells,” says Simon Rufer PhD ’25, a former student in Varanasi’s lab and now CEO and co-founder of CoFlo Medical. “By alkalizing the water, we actually make it easier for the oysters to form and maintain their shells.”

In trials conducted by the team, results first showed that the approach is biocompatible and doesn’t kill the larvae, and later showed that the oysters treated by MIT’s buffer approach did better than mineral or chemical approaches. Importantly, Hatton also notes, the process creates no waste products. Ocean water goes in, CO2 comes out. This captured CO2 can potentially be used for other applications, including to grow algae to be used as food for shellfish.

Varanasi and Hatton first introduced their approach in 2023. Their most recent paper, “Thermodynamics of Electrochemical Marine Inorganic Carbon Removal,” which was published last year in journal Environmental Science & Technology, outlines the overall thermodynamics of the process and presents a design tool to compare different carbon removal processes. The team received a “plus-up award” from ARPA-E to collaborate with University of Maine and further develop and scale the technology for application in aquaculture environments.

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Brady says the project represents another avenue for aquaculture to contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. “It pushes a new technology for removing carbon dioxide from ocean environments forward simultaneously,” says Brady. “If they can be coupled, aquaculture and carbon dioxide removal improve each other’s bottom line.”

Through the collaboration, the team is improving the robustness of the cells and learning about their function in real ocean environments. The project aims to scale up the technology, and to have significant impact on climate and the environment, but it includes another big focus.

“It’s also about jobs,” says Varanasi. “It’s about supporting the local economy and coastal communities who rely on aquaculture for their livelihood. We could usher in a whole new resilient blue economy. We think that this is only the beginning. What we have developed can really be scaled.”

Mook says the work is very much an applied science, “[and] because it’s applied science, it means that we benefit hugely from being connected and plugged into academic institutions that are doing research very relevant to our livelihoods. Without science, we don’t have a prayer of continuing this industry.”

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New York homicide suspect arrested in Maine

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New York  homicide suspect arrested in Maine


WATERVILLE, Maine (WGME) — A 19-year-old wanted for homicide in connection with multiple gang-related shootings in New York has been arrested in Maine.

Police say they searched a home at 439 West River Road in Waterville on Friday around 11 a.m. and found 19-year-old David McCadney of New York.

According to police, McCadney was wanted in New York for second degree homicide in connection with multiple gang-related shootings.

McCadney was arrested and charged with fugitive from justice and is being held without bail at the Kennebec County Correctional Facility.

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McCadney is expected to be extradited back to New York at a later date.



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