Hours before two of Maine’s leading Democratic candidates were prepared to speak with supporters on Lisbon St. in downtown Lewiston, a Bartlett St. shooting sent shockwaves through the community leading to a lockdown at the public school system.
It was a shooting in a city where gun violence — the majority of it committed by youths who are never charged or named — has become common place.
Lewiston Public Schools Superintendent Jake Langlais notified families Thursday afternoon that a firearm had been discharged on Bartlett Street, the latest in a long-running string of shooting incidents on what police data show is one of the most gun-plagued streets in Maine’s second-largest city.
In a 2:36 p.m. message sent to district parents, Langlais said the Lewiston Police Department had a suspect in custody, that the firearm had been recovered, and that the area was secure. The superintendent emphasized that the incident involved adults and that “no one school aged was involved.”
“Sharing what we know as of 2:30 PM April 30, 2026,” Langlais wrote. “A firearm was discharged on Bartlett Street this afternoon. We have been informed by Lewiston Police Department that they have someone in custody. The area is secure. The firearm has been recovered and it is in police custody. This was an adult incident. No one school aged was involved. We will stay in contact with law enforcement. At this time the scene and incident have been secured. We are able to continue with our afternoon as scheduled. If anything changes we will broadcast further.”
Only steps away from the area Lewiston police locked down on Thursday, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a far left gubernatorial candidate, were poised to meet at the headquarters of the Maine People’s Alliance, a 501(c)4 political advocacy group funded by George Soros, Pierre Omidyar, and the network of millionaires and billionaires connected to Arabella Advisors.
The Maine People’s Alliance is also the fiscal sponsor of the Community Organizing Alliance, a migrant-run political group created and controlled by Gateway Community Services, a Somali MaineCare agency that has drawn multiple state and federal investigations for credible allegations of welfare fraud.
Both Platner and Bellows have made overt efforts to court both the Community Organizing Alliance, which shares a Canal St. office with Gateway Community Services, and the general Somali community, which is concentrated in and around the Bartlett St. area.
Thursday’s gunfire is not an outlier. It is the pattern.
Lewiston Police Department records obtained by the Maine Wire under the state’s Freedom of Access Act show that Bartlett Street is one of the most shooting-prone corridors in the city. Between January 2019 and early July 2025 — the period covered by the FOAA return — Lewiston logged 192 separate shooting incidents citywide. Bartlett Street alone accounted for 23 of them, alongside 158 confirmed drug overdoses, placing it in a small cluster of streets that drive the city’s gun-violence numbers.
The Maine Wire has documented multiple shootings on or immediately adjacent to Bartlett Street over the past 18 months alone, including a pair of shootings in two days in April 2025 that resulted in a bullet striking an apartment at 176 Bartlett St. and the arrest of a 15-year-old boy; a June 2025 shooting near Bartlett and Walnut that left a 29-year-old man with two gunshot wounds; and a July 2025 incident in which a young man opened fire toward the Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services (MEIRS) building at 256 Bartlett St. in broad daylight, sending rounds into the building and parked vehicles.
Bartlett St., in addition to being the location of MEIRS and multiple subsidized housing complexes, is also the location of a controversial Somali Mosque that has been involved in a pitched dispute with its neighbors and city officials over code enforcement concerns.
Lewiston police have themselves described the Bartlett St. corridor as one of the city’s most troubled. Former Chief David St. Pierre held a press conference and convened parent information sessions in 2024 and 2025 specifically to address the surge in “shots fired” calls, many of them clustered on or near Bartlett.
Lewiston Police had not, as of publication, released the name of the person taken into custody, the specific address on Bartlett Street where the firearm was discharged, the type of weapon recovered, or whether any individuals were struck. Langlais’s message to parents is, at this hour, the only public communication from any government entity about the incident.
If we could pass the SAVE ACT and prevent these illegal alien Somalis from voting , NOBODY would step foot in Lewiston , except for maybe Paul LePage who actually gives a shit about what happens there .
Bellows and Platner certainly don’t .