What We Know About the Maine Shooting Suspect

A two-day manhunt ended Friday when the authorities in Maine said they had found Robert R. Card Jr., 40, dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. Mr. Card was suspected of fatally shooting 18 people and wounding 13 others at a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday.

While Mr. Card was believed to be at large, the authorities had ordered tens of thousands of residents of Lewiston and some nearby towns to stay home or shelter in place, and warned that he was armed and dangerous. The hunt for him ranged across a wide area of southern Maine, and law enforcement agents scoured a number of locations, including properties belonging to his family in Bowdoin and a stretch of the Androscoggin River near a boat ramp in Lisbon Falls where his car was found abandoned.

In the end, the authorities located Mr. Card’s body near a recycling center in Lisbon Falls where he had once worked. The discovery was made at 7:45 p.m. Friday, about 49 hours after the shooting rampage had begun, the authorities said. They did not say when they thought he died.

One aspect of Mr. Card’s biography that seemed to loom large during the manhunt was his military service. According to the U.S. Army’s public affairs office, he was a sergeant first class in the Army Reserve who had enlisted in December 2002 and was assigned to the Third Battalion, 304th Infantry Regiment in Saco, Maine.

He was trained as a petroleum supply specialist, whose work involved shipping and storing vehicle and aircraft fuel, and did not serve on any combat deployments, according to an Army spokesman.

Police investigators were looking into an incident in which Mr. Card had a run-in with officials during a recent visit to Camp Smith, a National Guard training facility outside Peekskill, N.Y., not far from West Point, a senior law enforcement official said. The official said that Mr. Card was later evaluated at a mental health facility.

Bryce Dubee, an Army spokesman, said Mr. Card’s reserve unit supported training at West Point in the summer, but there were no records to indicate he had instructed or participated in any training. Mr. Dubee declined to provide further details, citing federal privacy rules and the active investigation.

Mr. Card attended the University of Maine from 2001 to 2004, a university spokesman said, and majored in engineering technology. He did not complete his studies or graduate.

The recycling center near where he was found dead is operated by Maine Recycling. The company’s owner, Leo Madden, said that Mr. Card used to work there.

“His demeanor at Maine Recycling was no different from anybody else,” Mr. Madden said.

Mr. Card was in Bowdoin, his hometown, to hunt deer as recently as last fall, a neighbor of his family said. Bowdoin is a small community about 16 miles from Lewiston. The neighbor, Rick Goddard, 44, said he had known the Card family most of his life, because Mr. Goddard’s parents live less than a mile down the road from the Card family house.

He described the Cards as quiet farmers who had been in the area for several generations.

A farm owned by the Card family sits a short drive away, beside a property that used to be owned by Mr. Card’s grandfather, Mr. Goddard said, and he pointed to another property nearby that had once been home to Mr. Card’s great-grandfather. It now sits abandoned.

Anna Betts contributed reporting.