The manhunt for suspected Maine mass murderer Robert Card continued through Thursday night, with heavily armed police and FBI agents raiding a home belonging to one of his relatives.

Part of the search played out on live TV as law enforcement officers executed warrants in the neighbouring town of Bowdoin where Card lived.

Officers asked TV crews to turn off their lights nearby before yelling into a megaphone towards one home: ‘You need to come outside now with nothing in your hands. Your hands in the air.’

In most instances when police execute warrants — even for suspects wanted for violent crimes — they move quickly to enter the home. But hours later, after repeated announcements and a search, authorities moved off — and it was still unclear whether Card had ever been there.

Richard Goddard, who lives on the road where the search took place, knows the Card family. Robert Card, who is four years younger, knows the terrain well, he said.

‘This is his stomping ground. He grew up here,’ he said. ‘He knows every ledge to hide behind, every thicket.’

Marko Galbreath, a former Florida police sergeant and SWAT team member, told the Daily Mail Card could be anywhere by now.

‘He could still be in that area, planning to have a shootout with police, planning to commit suicide, planning to commit another attack. Or, you know what, he could be in Texas right now. We have no idea,’ he said.

‘If he planned it out well enough, he could very well be far from that area right now.

‘We need to tell the entire country that until this guy is captured, we need to use due diligence.’

FBI descend on Maine shooter suspect Robert Card’s home after loud bangs were heard at the house (Picture: CNN)

Robert Card, 40, seen here in a handout photo courtesy of the Lewiston Police Department, is a person of interest in the mass shooting (Picture: Lewiston Police Department/UPI/Shutterstock)

Law enforcement officers stand near armoured and tactical vehicles, center, near a property on Meadow Road, in Bowdoin, Maine (Picture: AP)

A member of law enforcement walks with a police dog outside a property (Picture: AP)

Law enforcement are seen outside the home of suspect Robert Card’s father and brother in Bowdoin, Maine (Picture: AFP via Getty Images)

Several homes were being searched and every lead pursued in the hunt for Card, a 40-year-old with firearms instructor training.

Authorities said he should be considered armed and dangerous and not approached.

Card is suspected of opening fire with at least one rifle at a bar and a bowling alley Wednesday in Lewiston, which is about 15 miles from Bowdoin and is Maine’s second-largest city.

The evening shootings killed 18 people and wounded 13 others, with three people still in a critical condition in hospital, authorities said.

Authorities haven’t said how many guns were used or how they were obtained.

The death toll is close to the annual number of homicides that normally occur in Maine, which has fluctuated between 16 and 29 since 2012, according to Maine State Police.

The victims included Bill Young and his 14-year-old son Aaron who were shot and killed at the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley, Bill’s brother Rob Young told Reuters.

Also among the dead was Bryan MacFarlane, 40, who was part of a group in the deaf community participating in a cornhole tournament at Schemengees Bar & Grille when he was killed, his sister Keri Brooks told CNN.

Schools, doctor’s offices and grocery stores closed and people stayed behind locked doors in cities as far as 50 miles from the scenes of the shootings.

Law enforcement officials in Maine describe Card as a certified firearms instructor and a member of the US Army Reserves (Picture: Lewiston Police Department/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock)

Maine’s largest city, Portland, closed its public buildings, while Canada Border Services Agency issued an ‘armed and dangerous’ alert to its officers stationed along the US border.

Streets in Lewiston and surrounding communities were virtually deserted late Thursday night.

The occasional truck or police patrol would drive through neighbourhoods dotted with illuminated giant pumpkins and ghosts for Halloween.

Schools in Lewiston were to remain closed Friday, while those in Portland would decide in the morning whether to open. Bates College in Lewiston also cancelled classes Friday and postponed the inauguration of the school’s first Black president.

The attacks stunned a state of only 1.3 million people that has one of the country’s lowest homicide rates: 29 killings in all of 2022.

Maine Governor Janet Mills promised to do whatever was needed to find Card and to ‘hold whoever is responsible for this atrocity accountable … and to seek full justice for the victims and their families’.

Law enforcement vehicles leave the area near the home of mass-shooting suspect Robert Card in Bowdoin, Maine (Picture: EPA)

As authorities searched for Card, details about his recent behaviour emerged.

Card underwent a mental health evaluation in mid-July after he began acting erratically while with his reserve regiment, a US official told The Associated Press.

A bulletin sent to police across the country after the attack said Card had been committed to a mental health facility for two weeks this past summer after ‘hearing voices and threats to shoot up’ a military base.

Maine doesn’t require permits to carry guns, and the state has a longstanding culture of gun ownership that is tied to its traditions of hunting and sport shooting.

Keeping in mind the strong support for gun rights, lawmakers passed a ‘yellow flag’ law in 2019 that would require police to seek a medical evaluation of anyone believed to be dangerous before then trying to take their guns away.

However, critics charged that it was a weaker version of the tougher ‘red flag’ laws that many other states have adopted.

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A neighbour, Dave Letarte, said Card’s family let them deer hunt on their property and were kind, although Letarte said he noticed Card appeared to have mental problems for a while.

‘People have problems, but you don’t expect them to go on the deep end like that,’ Letarte said. ‘When we saw it on the news last night, I was shocked.’

A telephone number listed for Card in public records was not in service. A woman who answered a phone number for one of Card’s relatives said Thursday afternoon the family was helping the FBI. She didn’t give her name or additional details.

In many past US mass shootings, the suspect was found — whether dead or alive — within minutes. But Card was still on the loose a full day after the shootings.

The shootings mark the 36th mass killing in the United States this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.

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Part of the search played out on live TV as law enforcement officers executed warrants in the neighbouring town of Bowdoin where Card lived.