Christopher Matthews walks Tuesday on Pine Street in Lewiston, and recalls hearing six gunshots Jan. 8 while returning  home from Ward’s Market. Matthews found the incident unsettling and believes there is a need for stricter firearm consequences. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

LEWISTON — On the afternoon of Dec. 17, Jeannie Cunningham was walking her dog toward a store on Walnut Street when the thunder of gunfire exploded around her. 

Two groups of people were exchanging gunfire near the corner of Walnut and Blake streets. Fearful of getting caught in the crossfire, Cunningham pressed herself flat against a building as bullets whipped by. 

She might have stayed right there, too. But then she saw a group of kids — second graders, she guessed — stepping off a bus right near the line of fire. 

Cunningham came forward, at risk of stepping into the line of fire herself, to see the children safely home. It was hard to believe, she said, that all this shooting was happening in broad daylight. 

Christopher Matthews, meanwhile, was walking back from Ward’s Market on Pine Street the afternoon of Jan. 8 when shots rang out around him. 

“I heard six shots,” Matthews said at the time. “Nothing much scares me, but I’m a little shaken up right now.” 

There’s a woman named Candy who lives on Blake Street. Candy, a grandmother and a chaplain, said there has been so much gunfire and other violence right outside her window lately, she seldom goes out in daytime unless her daughter is with her. 

“After dark, I just don’t go out at all anymore,” she said. 

Jimi Cutting lives near the corner of Sabattus and College streets, which has been a hot zone for gunfire and other mayhem in recent years. 

Cutting has neighbors who absolutely will not venture outside anymore unless they absolutely have to — who wants to step outside knowing that bullets might fly at any time and one could easily find himself in the crossfire? 

Cutting isn’t having it. Cowering for fear of violence, he said, “is just no way to live for me.” 

‘MY GREATEST FEAR’ 

Anybody who lives in the downtown — or even on the edge of it — has come to understand that there are risks to going outside that simply weren’t there a few years back. 

As gang members and drug dealers — many from out of state — battle for territory on the streets of Lewiston, random gunfire has become a common thing. There are some periods where gunfire is reported almost daily in one corner of the downtown or another. 

Sometimes there are victims: young men with gunshot wounds to their limbs or bellies. Almost always, these victims were directly involved in the gun fights and so they are not inclined to help police with their investigations. 

A man who lives near the scene of a shooting on Walnut Street in Lewiston on Dec. 17 said he had walked by this window with his two children just minutes before shots rang out and a window was pierced with a bullet. Submitted photo

More often, there are no victims, just still-hot shell casings in the streets and bullet holes punched into the sides of buildings. At one recent shooting scene, on Walnut Street, a bullet punched a hole in a tenement window just moments after a tenant had walked by the window with his two young kids.

That was a near miss. For some, it feels like just a matter of time before violence in Lewiston takes an ugly turn. 

“My greatest fear,” said Janelle Turcotte, a 45-year-old woman who sometimes hears the sound of gunfire from her home just beyond the edge of downtown, “is that one of these instances will result in the loss of innocent life. A family driving home from hockey practice or an elderly individual walking out of the grocery store.” 

And that’s just the thing. It’s not only those people who live directly in the downtown who find themselves under fire lately. It may have once been that gun mayhem and associated crime was for a few select areas of the downtown alone, but it’s not that way anymore. 

“I’ve been a resident of Lewiston my entire life,” Turcotte said, “and do not recall gunfire or drive-by shootings being an issue until recently.” 

In 2019, Turcotte bought a home in a quiet neighborhood that sits above the downtown, across from Lewiston High School. It used to be peaceful there. 

“An uptick of transients walking through my yard and reports of theft in the neighborhood began in 2022 and prompted us to install a security cam system,” said Turcotte. “Since then, it’s picked up a number of  incidents, including theft and alerts of gunfire.” 

Whenever she hears gunfire — and those blasts have been frequent since the middle of last summer — Turcotte dutifully calls police to report them. Then she waits nervously to hear if there were victims. 

Like most people interviewed for this story, Turcotte is not optimistic that things will get better any time soon. 

“I am alarmed by the appearance of lack of concern from our state and local leaders,” Turcotte said. “Has there been any action following the joint press conference with the mayor and law enforcement in late August? If so, it’s not working. 

“Personally,” she said, “I feel the increase in crime stems from the drug epidemic and mental health issues in this area. Nobody has addressed these problems appropriately, and as a result, the crime has multiplied.”

Multiple gunshots were reported shortly before 5 a.m. on Feb. 18, 2024, in the area near 189 Pine St. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal file

DUCK AND COVER 

On Blake Street, Candy can relate. An older woman who walks with a cane, she feels particularly vulnerable any time she has to step outside. 

Four years ago, when her daughter moved to the neighborhood, things weren’t so bad. But over the past couple years, Candy said, downtown violence has become pretty much a daily occurrence. 

“In one of my first experiences with it, I had gone to bed and I was talking to my daughter on the phone while she was driving to work,” Candy said. “All of a sudden, I hear gunshots right on the other side of my living room — and then somebody started returning fire. I mean, it was a shootout at the O.K. Corral out here. I don’t know if it was happening at the apartment next to me or if it was across the street, but it was very close.” 

In downtown Lewiston, it’s a duck-and-cover kind of world lately, Candy noted. And she has heard rumblings about out-of-state gangsters and drug slingers who battle with locals over matters of turf. 

All of a sudden, Hollywood style street crime is right here in Lewiston. 

“You don’t even have to be close-up to get hurt,” Candy said. “There might be a drive-by shooting that you never see coming. And it’s not just the gunfire, it’s the violence in general. Look how many people get stabbed out here. You don’t hear about stabbings as much, but it happens a lot.” 

What can be done about it? As far as Candy is concerned, until someone finds a real solution, it’s mainly about people looking out for their neighbors; an old tradition that she sees in sharp decline. 

“My daughter and I go places together,” Candy said. “We kind of pay attention to who’s hanging around. We watch out for each other and I think that’s important. People need to look out for each other now more than ever.” 

Cunningham, who personally had to duck and cover during the shootout in December, has never seen the city so rife with violence. 

“I’ve lived here since November 1988,” she said. “I moved here with my mother as a young teen. I’ve seen a lot, and personally been through a lot of different violent situations just living here and growing up here. I haven’t ever felt uneasy to walk out my door or sit to relax with my daughter in a vehicle or outside somewhere.” 

Now, she says? The very act of going outside in downtown Lewiston is an unnerving affair. In fact, she said she feels more wary of her surroundings now than she did in the midst of the mass shooting in Lewiston on Oct. 25, 2023. 

“Even standing out front to get air, I look around me,” Cunningham said. “I feel very unsafe and don’t leave my place unless I have to. We need to take our city back, handcuff by handcuff, sentence by sentence.” 

Like so many others, Cunningham finds herself disappointed by city leadership in the wake of all the shootings and other violence. 

“We need our mayor to do a public briefing with what is going to happen if this continues in his city, on his watch,” she said. “He should be held accountable for not ever speaking to the public with a plan.” 

Matthews, rattled by gunshots on his trip back from the market in January, likewise feels that the people engaging in all this violence are not punished harshly enough. 

“My first thoughts are that the consequences for anyone discharging a firearm, outside of a clear case of self defense, should be severe,” he said. “This should apply to juveniles as well.” 

Matthews does appreciate police for stepping up patrols. But he feels that more community engagement might be just the thing to quiet some of the mayhem. 

“The importance of community events shouldn’t be undervalued,” he said. “It’s hard to want to shoot people you know and are friendly with.” 

‘COURSE OF SELF-DESTRUCTION’ 

Police block off Pine Street in Lewiston on Dec. 17, 2024, after reports of a shooting. Police who were in the area at the time of the shooting found a victim suffering from a gunshot wound as he fled down Pierce Street toward Pine Street. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal file

All in all, downtown residents don’t seem to be very happy with the way the city has responded to the upsurge in violence. 

They can’t listen to police scanners to stay informed anymore because police in both Lewiston and Auburn have encrypted their radio traffic. To get word of the latest shooting or other threat, most locals turn to social media where they share information or report hearing shots fired. 

Facebook groups like Lewiston Matters, Lewiston Politics Uncensored and Lewiston Rocks frequently feature long threads where dozens of locals discuss matters of downtown violence. 

The general thinking in those groups is that people can’t always count on police to go public about the latest threats and the media doesn’t cover every new act of violence in the downtown. 

As far as most of these folks are concerned, things are getting worse in downtown Lewiston, not better. 

“Every time I think Lewiston has reached its rock-bottom of social chaos, degradation and unpredictable crime, something else happens to prove that that is not the case,” said Maura Murphy. “If a drug epidemic, growing homeless population and unpredictable gunfire are not enough to wake us up, what will be?” 

Murphy lives in the Bates College area and is an administrator with the Lewiston Matters Facebook group. She is one of the many who frequently tunes in to City Council meetings in hopes of hearing more about plans to combat Lewiston violence. 

Murphy is frequently disappointed by what she hears. Too many people, she said, are willfully dismissing the level of violence within the city. Some, she asserts, may even be profiting from it. 

“While we’ve been on this downward trajectory for a long time,” Murphy said, “the intensity of our spinning apart is gaining momentum. We have a significant population of community and nonprofit leaders who are not only apologists for every kind of anti-social behavior ruining central Lewiston, but a number who are making money from it in the form of the grants, salaries and ‘administration’ dedicated to the alleged alleviation of the very problems that are only worsening.” 

Cutting, who lives in one of the most troubled parts of the city, agrees with Murphy’s take. The time of coddling violent offenders and of feel-good approaches to the problem, he said, is over. 

“It is up to us the citizens to claim ownership of our neighborhoods by not allowing those who choose violence to dictate terms to us,” Cutting said. “This is not something we can just let someone else take care of.” 

As shots continue to ring out across the city, and as bullets punch into buildings, cars and occasionally human flesh, there is fear among the Lewiston populace. 

But there are other emotions rising high right now, as well. Namely anger and more than a little bit of sadness for what the city has become. 

“Even as Lewiston’s prosperity declined,” Murphy said, “many of us of a certain age remember a city that was safe, stable and pleasant to live in because, regardless of social, economic or cultural background, everyone was expected to adapt to certain baselines of civilized public behavior.  

“While we will never return to the days many of us cherish in memory,” she continued, “if Lewiston is to have any kind of bright future, it is imperative that we dust off the underlying community social norms and values that kept our city reliably safe and stable for most of its history. Without doing so, we will continue on our current course of self-destruction, we will continue to be shunned by too many potential investors and residents and our property tax base will continue to atrophy. 

“Why should anyone invest in a city,” Murphy mused, “that has shown repeatedly that it doesn’t value itself in countless and multiplying ways?”