Lewiston mass shooting rattles local Somalis who came to Maine looking for safety 

Five days after the worst mass shooting in Maine’s history left 18 people dead at a bar and at a bowling alley in the city of Lewiston, Shukri Abasheikh was ringing up a customer at Mogadishu Store downtown. 

She’s known to her customers as Mama Shukri, and has been a fixture of Lisbon Street — Lewiston’s main drag — since she opened her store in 2007. She offers an array of East and West African food, spices, clothing, and other products. 

Today, though, business was slow. 

“Not a lot of customer[s],” she said. “It’s not like before, it’s very changed.”

The suspect in the Oct. 25 mass shooting was found dead two days later, on Oct. 27. The countywide lockdown has now been lifted but Mama Shukri said that many in the Somali community remained wary of venturing out. 

“They call me,” Abasheikh said, referring to other community members. “They say ‘Can I come outside?’ I say ‘Yes, the guy died!’”

Like many Somalis in Lewiston, Abasheikh and her family fled the Somali Civil War in the 1990s. After being initially resettled in big cities such as Atlanta, Georgia, many came to Lewiston looking for a smaller, safer place to live and raise families. 

The community now numbers in the thousands, and business owners like Abasheikh have been credited with reviving what had been a moribund downtown in this former mill city. Now, in the wake of the shooting, some Somali residents are grappling with a kind of violence many had tried to flee by coming to Lewiston in the first place. 

Across the street from Mogadishu Store, Abasheikh’s daughter Ifraax Saciid-Ciise runs a nonprofit focused on nonviolent communication and restorative justice. 

She said the shooting triggered fear and dark memories for many community members, who, like her, had already escaped war. 

As the shootings and subsequent manhunt unfolded, she said many were preoccupied with two central questions: “What should we do? Are we safe?” 

Making matters worse, with the whole county under lockdown for two days while the suspect was still at large, Saciid-Ciise said community Whatsapp groups were flooded with unreliable information. At one point, she said there was a rumor that the shooter would target immigrant communities. 

“So it was those type[s] of things that [were] being spread, that even caused more fear amongst our community,” she said. 

And she said that fear has persisted, of possible copycat shootings. While Saciid-Ciise attended a vigil for the victims on Sunday, she said others stayed home, still wary of public spaces. 

A few blocks away, Fowsia Musse said the shooting came on a grim anniversary for her. 

Musse, who runs a nonprofit focused on girls’ empowerment, was shot in Ethiopia exactly one year ago while visiting family. 

She said she was already grappling with that experience when the shooting in Lewiston unleashed a flood of traumatic memories. 

“Including my historical trauma, because we [fled] from a war, and it took me years of therapy to get over the first childhood trauma,” she said. 

Musse said many immigrant residents are already shouldering anxiety about friends and family members in their home countries. 

“People back home are not safe either. Whether it’s a drought or diseases or whatever, you know, there is some kind of sad news every day. So even though this was new to us,” she said of the Lewiston shooting, “at the same time, it’s not new.” 

Now, Musse said her primary concern is who will be there to support the victims after the dust settles. 

Lewiston is slowly coming back to life. 

At his newly opened East African restaurant Naima, Muktar Hersi was serving a late lunch to a handful of customers. 

Hersi is originally from the Somali region of Ethiopia. He fled multiple wars in East Africa before settling down in Maine with his wife in 2001. 

“When you are, you know, [an] immigrant who grew up in a war torn country,” he said, “It brings a lot of memory, you know, shooting, killing, all of that.” 

When he first learned of the shooting, Hersi said he immediately got in touch with his two boys who attend Bates College, not far from his restaurant downtown, to make sure they were safe. 

“I was shocked,” he said. “Even though they were safe. But I was panicking. You know, because this was new to us in Maine.” 

During the second day of the lockdown, as police searched for the suspect, Hersi said he came into the restaurant to prepare and deliver food to families stuck at home with their children. 

Asked if the shooting has made him feel differently about living in Lewiston, Hersi shook his head. 

“No no no no no,” he said. “We’re Lewistonians, like they say. We’re not going nowhere.”