34-Year-Old Charged With Killing 4 In Rural Town—Highway Shooting Also Linked, Police Say

Topline

A 34-year-old man was charged with murder after four people were killed in a shooting at a home in rural Maine, state police told multiple news outlets Tuesday evening, hours after police responded to the fatal incident as well as an apparently related shooting that injured three drivers on a highway 25 miles away.

A police officer stands on the corner of Portland Street and Main Street in Yarmouth, Maine, on … [+] Tuesday, April 18, 2023.

Michael Leonard via AP

Key Facts

Joseph Eaton was charged Tuesday over the fatal shooting in Bowdoin, Maine, and was transferred to a local jail while awaiting a court appearance, the Maine State Police told the Boston Globe.

Police found four bodies at a home in Bowdoin shortly before 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, the Portland Press Herald reported.

The state police said earlier Tuesday a shooting near an exit to Interstate 295 in the town of Yarmouth that left three people injured—including one with serious injuries—was linked to the Bowdoin killings, but officials have not specified Eaton’s involvement in the Yarmouth shooting.

The shootings forced police to shut down parts of Interstate 295 and search nearby cars before apprehending a suspect in a wooded area in Yarmouth—authorities did not say whether Eaton was the arrestee, but stated “there is no active threat to the community” after the arrest.

The town of Yarmouth said on Facebook local police recovered a firearm from the scene of the highway shooting.

What We Don’t Know

Police have not yet identified the victims or specified a motive.

Tangent

The highway shooting took place in Yarmouth, a suburban seaside town with about 9,000 residents roughly 10 miles north of Portland, the state’s largest city. With a population of just over 3,000, Bowdoin is further north and more rural, located about 10 miles from Bowdoin College in the city of Brunswick. Homicides are fairly rare in Maine: The state recorded just 20 homicide deaths in 2021, or 1.7 per 100,000 residents, one of the nation’s lowest rates according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Key Background

Tuesday’s shooting in Maine comes on the heels of a number of mass shootings. Over the weekend, four people were killed and 32 were injured at a Sweet 16 birthday party in Dadeville, Alabama. The same night, two people were killed and four were hospitalized when a shooter fired into a public park in Louisville, Kentucky. Last week, a gunman opened fire at a bank in Louisville, killing five people and injuring another eight before he was killed during a shootout with police. And late last month, a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, left three children and three adults dead at private Christian elementary school.

Big Number

164. That’s how many mass shootings with four or more injuries or deaths have occurred in the U.S. so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.