BOWDOIN, Maine (AP) — A Maine man who police say killed four people in a home and then shot three others randomly on a busy highway had been released days earlier from prison, where he had been serving time for a probation violation, a state official said Wednesday.
Joseph Eaton, 34, was released Friday from the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, where he had been sentenced in March 2021, said Anna Black, director of governmental affairs for the Maine Department of Corrections.
State records also show that Eaton carried with him a criminal history that should have prevented him from legally possessing a gun.
The shootings in Maine began in the small town of Bowdoin, where four people were killed Tuesday. Then a chaotic scene developed in which shots were fired at vehicles on an interstate highway over 20 miles away in the community of Yarmouth, police said. Three people were shot there, and one remained in critical condition Wednesday.
“This is an active investigation with a lot of moving parts,” Shannon Moss, state police spokesperson, said Wednesday.
Eaton, of Bowdoin, was charged with four counts of murder but was not immediately charged in the highway shootings, she said. He was jailed while awaiting a court appearance. It was unclear if he had an attorney to speak on his behalf, a jail official said Wednesday.
The names of the victims were not released, and state police didn’t discuss any possible motive. The four bodies were taken to the state medical examiner’s office in Augusta for positive identification and autopsies.
Ian Halsey, of Bowdoinham, said that two cousins were shot and that his uncle suffered shrapnel injuries in a single car. One of his cousins is in critical condition, and none of the family knew the shooter, he said.
“They were just passersby in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said of his family. “It’s horrible what happened.”
Eaton was charged over the past decade with more than a half-dozen crimes and served an eight-month sentence last year for assault, according to state records. Past convictions included aggravated assault, a felony that would prevent him from legally having a firearm.
The origins and ownership of the firearms used in Tuesday’s shootings were unclear. State police declined to comment on the weapon that was used.
The seven people shot Tuesday were the latest victims of mass shootings in the U.S., whose targets included a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee; a bank in Louisville, Kentucky, and a Sweet Sixteen party in a small city in Alabama.
In Bowdoin, yellow crime tape hung where the shootings took place in a home flanked by woods at the end of a long, gravel driveway. Detectives and evidence technicians remained in the home collecting evidence late Tuesday, long after hearses left the driveway.
At one point, a woman spoke to police outside the house, then dropped to her knees and sobbed.
In Yarmouth on Wednesday, traffic flowed normally on Interstate 295, where a day before the three people were shot in cars and the gunman was apprehended.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills tweeted her concern for the “families, friends and loved ones of those impacted by this tragedy.” She said she was praying for the injured.
“Like people across Maine, I am shocked and deeply saddened. Acts of violence like we experienced today shake our state and our communities to the core,” she said.
