A veteran Sebago hunter who gave chase to a suspected killer Friday in Windham – and nearly took him down – is winning high praise from law enforcement.
“I was the one in the U-Haul who chased him down and smashed into him,” Matt York, a registered Maine Guide told The Maine Wire in an exclusive interview.
York, 38, was giving chase to a man suspected in Windham on Friday of randomly killing a motorcyclist, later identified as Erin Hayne, 33, of Casco, in cold blood along Route 302.
York was in traffic, having just pulled out of a nearby U-Haul lot headed to Home Depot, and next to his U-Haul truck was a man on a motorcycle.
“I heard two shots – bam, bam – and the guy on the bike went down on his face, in a pool of blood,” York recalled. “I watched the guy get shot about 10 feet from me.”
As bystanders began rendering first aid to the victim, York, who was with a friend in the truck, began following the suspect shooter’s car as he called 911 and gave cops the shooter’s license plate and location.
At one point he rammed the suspect’s car to try to disable the shooter’s ability to get away.
“I had my .44 Smith & Wesson with me. I was going to shoot him or shoot out his tires but there were too many people’s lives in danger,” York added.
“If I was going to take a shot I wanted to make sure it was an ethical shot.”
“We chased him to Raymond, he went up Colonial Park. We went up in there. He had already turned around and had his car facing us with his gun pointed at us. He took a couple shots at us.
“I ducked and floored it, just missing him, and he took off. By the time we got turned around and back on 302 he was gone, heading towards Raymond. It was pretty intense.”
Simon James of “Gorham ME Scoop” on Facebook posted video of York giving chase in the U-Haul.
“I was filming because the U-Haul was driving recklessly and I called the cops on them,” James said. “Turns out they were trying to chase the shooter to keep an eye on him.”
Police praised York for his having helped them track down the suspect by giving them the suspect’s plate number and location.
They also marveled at his cool head, the way he held his fire after he determined instantly that he didn’t have a clear, safe shot at the suspect.
Cops found the suspect’s car, empty, in a Dunkin parking lot in Raymond following the fatal shooting in Windham. With the help of K-9s They later found him dead, a victim of suicide.
The suspect was later identified as James Ford, 48, of Windham, who police said had no connection to the victim.
Detectives were working to speak with the Hayne’s and Ford’s families to try to make sense of what appeared to be a random crime possibly triggered by road rage.
Ford, who lived alone, had left his apartment in Windham shortly before shooting Hayne.
An autopsy concluded that Hayne died from multiple gunshot wounds and Ford a self-inflicted bullet to the head.
York, who grew up in Windham, runs Backroads Guide Service. “I’m just glad I was able to help in some way,” he said.
York said he spends most of his time in the woods “because of this kind of stuff,” he said of the tragic killing in broad daylight in busy Windham.
Though York pulled his punches in the first encounter because he didn’t think he had a safe shot at the suspect, “if I saw him shooting at more people I was going to shoot him right there.”
He said it was, ironically, only by chance that he had his pistol with him in the U-Haul.
When he dropped off his pickup truck at the U-Haul center to grab the rental, he was going to leave his gun behind but then thought to himself “well, I’ll bring it with me. You never know these days.”
