RUMFORD — A witness to a double murder was arrested Friday and charged in the Monday shootings of Victor Reed Sheldon and Roger Leroy Day Jr. at their home on Pine Street.

Richard Moulton, 20, of 48 Main St., Mexico, was interviewed by detectives at the Rumford Police Department in the afternoon and taken to Oxford County Jail in Paris. He was charged with two counts of murder. Earlier in the day, Eric Joseph Hamel, 19, of 21 Mexico Ave., Mexico, was charged with two counts of murder stemming from the killings.

Police would not discuss a motive in the case, but said they did not suspect a drug connection. “Drugs really didn’t seem to play a huge role in this investigation,” Maine State Police Lt. BrianMcDonough said.

A handgun connected to the crime was recovered near the house where the men died, he said.

Sheldon, 22, and Day, 48, were shot to death around 10 p.m. Monday.

Moulton had been cooperating with police in the days following the murder, including helping draft a composite sketch of the sole shooter, describing a white man in his early 20s running from the scene on foot.

He was at the home at the time of the shootings, called police to report them and said he witnessed it.

Moulton and Hamel are expected to make initial court appearances Monday in Oxford County Superior Court. Hamel is scheduled for 1 p.m. Both men were honor roll students at Mountain Valley High School in Rumford; Hamel graduated in June.

He was arrested around 4 a.m. Friday on two counts of murder, following an interview, McDonough said. There was no arrest warrant issued for either of the two men. Unlike Moulton, the first contact police had with Hamel was Thursday night. He became a suspect following several witness interviews during the past couple of days.

McDonough said Friday at a press conference in Gray that Moulton and Sheldon had been close friends and that Hamel had a relationship of some sort with Sheldon. All of the men knew each other in some way,McDonough said.

He said Hamel and Moulton “don’t appear to have a huge amount of criminal history,” but may have had brushes with the law as juveniles.

Despite the two arrests, the investigation is in its early stages, McDonough said. There is an “immense amount of work” to do, he said. Police were in the process of getting additional search warrants in an effort to gather more evidence on Friday, and more interviews are planned.

McDonough called the two arrests a “huge accomplishment” and cited state and local police with an “extremely well-coordinated” investigation.

McDonough also credited the Maine Forest Service, the Maine Warden Service, the Oxford County Sheriff’s Department, the Rumford Fire Department and Florida Light and Power for their help.

Maine State Police investigators work at the home of murder suspect Eric Hamel in Mexico.

Maine State Police Detective Lt. Brian McDonough fields questions from reporters outside the Gray Barracks Friday afternoon announcing that there has been two
arrests made in Monday’d double homicide in Rumford.