Dylan Ketcham, right, talks to Maine State Police detectives Saturday near the scene on Lincoln Avenue in Gardiner where one man was discovered shot and another stabbed shortly after 1 a.m. Ketcham was later arrested and charged with elevated aggravated assault. Andy Molloy/Kennebec Journal
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 Kennebec County Correctional Facility
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.
Maine State Police detectives escort Assistant Attorney General Meg Elam along a blood trail from a shooting and stabbing that occurred in the early hours of Saturday in Gardiner. Andy Molloy/Kennebec Journal
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.
Maine State Police detectives on Saturday brief Assistant Attorney General Meg Elam on a shooting and stabbing that occurred in the early hours of Saturday in Gardiner. The two male victims, both in their 20s, are undergoing emergency surgery in Portland while a suspect was apprehended by a tracking dog nearby, according to state police. Andy Molloy/Kennebec Journal
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.
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