A 21-year-old Gardiner man has been arrested and charged in connection with the shooting of one man and the stabbing of another in the city early Saturday morning.
Dylan Ketcham was arrested Saturday afternoon at the Gardiner Police Department, where he had been questioned about the attack, said Maine State Police spokesman Steve McCausland. Ketcham was charged with elevated aggravated assault and is being held at the Kennebec County jail on $150,000 bail.
The two wounded men were flown by helicopter to Maine Medical Center in Portland, where they underwent emergency surgery, McCausland said.
The victims were found outside a home on Lincoln Avenue, where one of them had come to the door to ask for help just after 1 a.m. Saturday.
Local police responded, and the men were taken by ambulance to MaineGeneral Medical Center in Augusta. Later, they were transferred by LifeFlight helicopter to Maine Med.
A police dog helped track the suspect – later identified as Ketcham – to an abandoned building about half a mile away, according to McCausland.
The two victims are in their 20s, according to McCausland. He said authorities were continuing to withhold their identities Saturday night “as police continue to monitor their conditions.”
Evidence of a confrontation was splattered over the scene on Saturday afternoon. A trail of blood led from behind 156 Lincoln Ave., a family home in a residential neighborhood, up to the front door. Police were at the house, and sand had been spread over the bloody snow.
A man who answered the door at the house on Saturday said the noise from the confrontation was very different from the kids’ squabbles he normally hears from the children’s athletic fields across the street.
“This was not just an argument,” said the man, who declined to give his name.
Gardiner police on Saturday afternoon said any danger to neighbors had passed.
“There is no threat to the public” related to the incident, Detective Sgt. Todd Pilsbury told a reporter via text message.
Kennebec Journal photographer Andy Molloy contributed to this report.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Comments are no longer available on this story