The man shot outside the Walmart in Scarborough on Friday night remained in critical condition Sunday morning at a Portland hospital, Maine State Police said as they continued to reconstruct the circumstances of the incident.
Ryan Townsend, 24, of Saco was taken to Maine Medical Center with a gunshot wound, and was scheduled for surgery Sunday morning, Maine Department of Safety spokesman Steve McCausland said.
In an interview Sunday morning, McCausland said police still were conducting interviews and sifting through physical evidence. They have not yet charged a suspect and are not releasing any more information about what they believe led to the shooting.
A spokeswoman for the hospital said she could provide no information on Townsend, but McCausland said he was in critical condition.
A police photographer documents the scene of a shooting, including shell casings near evidence markers, on Friday in the parking lot outside Walmart in Scarborough. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer
Witnesses said Friday night that two people were loading groceries into a truck in the Walmart parking lot when another person walked up and shot at them.
Walmart was locked down for more than an hour, and investigators spent hours collecting evidence at the scene. Police tape cordoned off a few vehicles, including a white pickup truck that was running with its lights on, its doors open and a full grocery cart nearby. The icy pavement behind a small dark sedan was marked by what appeared to be blood, and the driver’s door of that vehicle also was open.
Police later said the pickup belongs to the shooter and the sedan belongs to the person who was wounded.
On Friday night, state police Lt. Mark Holmquist said investigators believed the three people involved in the incident knew one another.
McCausland said in the statement that investigators questioned Tyler Hish, 24, of Scarborough on Friday night and released him. “A woman who witnessed the shooting and knows both men also was questioned and she was also released,” he said.
Hish “was involved in the altercation with Townsend,” McCausland said in a telephone interview Saturday.
He declined to say how he believed Hish was involved, however.
“The key factor is that we’re trying to pinpoint what happened in that parking lot,” McCausland said, adding the process will involve interviews and review of the forensic evidence that investigators collected Friday night.
“Investigators and evidence technicians were on the scene until early this morning and will be conducting more interviews today,” he said in the statement Saturday.
There is no remaining danger to the public related to the incident, McCausland said.
Scarborough police on Saturday urged anyone who witnessed the shooting and hasn’t yet spoken to police to contact the department. The department’s phone number is 883-6361.
Friday night’s shooting was the third involving gunfire at a Walmart parking lot in Maine in recent years.
The parking lot of the Walmart in Auburn was the site of a fatal shooting in July 2019. Gage Dalphonse, now 22, of Auburn was charged with killing 41-year-old Jean Fournier of Turner after an apparent verbal altercation between Fournier’s girlfriend and Dalphonse, who previously worked together. He has yet to stand trial.
Two men exchanged gunfire in the parking lot of the Walmart in Augusta in June 2016. Neither was harmed, but the incident led to charges against both men.
Staff Writer Eric Russell contributed to this report.
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