PRINCETON — Maine State Police were investigating a shooting and suicide at a hunting and fishing camp on Long Lake on Tuesday, according to Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.
Steve Whitman, 60, reportedly suffered two gunshot wounds around 5 p.m. but still managed to call 911 and give Washington County Sheriff’s Office dispatchers details about the man who shot him, identified as Craig Woodruff, 52, of Baileyville, McCausland stated in an email late Tuesday.
Whitman and his wife, Linda “Lin” Whitman, are the owners and operators of Long Lake Camps, located about 1½ miles from town. One of Woodruff’s relatives is a manager at the camp and Woodruff was a guide, according to the camp’s website.
“Whitman is being treated at (Eastern Maine Medical Center) in Bangor for two gunshot wounds,” McCausland said. “He is expected to survive.”
Woodruff was found dead inside his vehicle a short distance away, “along the Long Lake Camp Road,” McCausland said.
Woodruff’s body will be taken to the state medical examiner’s office in Augusta on Wednesday for an autopsy.
Lin Whitman said she got a call saying her husband was hurt shortly after the shooting.
“There was an altercation and my husband is stable and breathing,” she said by phone from Massachusetts. “I’m just getting into my car right now. I’ve got a six-hour drive to get there.”
Her husband has been running the 12-cabin hunting and fishing camp on Rolfe Point this summer, she said. The business is located on Long Lake Camp Road, a gravel road just west of Route 1.
“One mile up Long Lake is the Passamaquoddy tribal lands and two miles down river is the tiny town of Princeton,” the Long Lake Camps website states.
The Whitmans purchased the camps in 2004, the site says.
Whitman said during the phone interview that she knew Woodruff.
BDN reporter Tim Cox contributed to this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
