One part of the husband-wife duo behind Schemengees Bar and Grille, a beloved Lewiston pool hall that closed after it was targeted in Maine’s deadliest mass shooting on record, died Tuesday.
David Lebel died unexpectedly Tuesday, according to his wife, Kathy, who opened Schemengees with her husband in 1999 and later relocated the business from the former R.I. Mitchell building downtown to 551 Lincoln St. by the Androscoggin River. Lebel, who is also survived by a son and was previously diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, was 57 years old.
“He embraced life and people with an open heart,” Kathy Lebel wrote Tuesday night in a Facebook post that did not mention the cause of death. “Making friends came effortlessly to him; once you met Dave, you couldn’t help but feel the warmth of his kind soul.”
Kathy Lebel previously said she got the idea while in bed one night to purchase Schemengees to satisfy her love of pool after her husband mentioned one of her former haunts was for sale.
“He looks at me and says, ‘We’re not going to buy that,’” Kathy Lebel told the Associated Press earlier this year. “I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? I’m going to buy it. I don’t know what it takes, but I want that pool hall.’”
The couple bought Schemengees and kept its moniker, a nickname of the previous owner that gave Kathy Lebel amusement when others struggled to pronounce or spell it.
David Lebel died the same day the state commission investigating the Lewiston mass shooting released its final report into police and military mistakes preceding the Oct. 25, 2023, rampage at Schemengees and Just-In-Time Recreation that left 18 dead and 13 injured.
Robert Card II, a 40-year-old Army reservist from Bowdoin whose family and peers had warned police and military superiors for months about declining mental health and access to guns carried out the attack that night at the busy bowling alley and proceeded to Schemengees, where dozens of people were playing cornhole. The shooter had also played at the bar.
Following a two-day manhunt, Card was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in nearby Lisbon. Schemengees has been closed since the shooting, while Just-In-Time Recreation reopened in May. Kathy Lebel also owns Station Grill Restaurant in Lewiston.
Arthur Barnard, who was playing pool with his 42-year-old son, Arthur “Artie” Strout, at Schemengees that Wednesday night in October and left a few minutes before the shooting that killed his son and nine others at the bar, said he remembered going to a hospital after the rampage and sitting with David Lebel to keep him company.
“He was a great guy,” Barnard said, adding he treated his employees and everyone “like family.”
The Lebels “shared 37 wonderful years together, raising our son and creating a life filled with love,” Kathy wrote Tuesday night.
“Dave supported me wholeheartedly in every crazy idea I had,” Kathy Lebel wrote Tuesday night. “If I was all in, so was he. I was incredibly lucky to have him choose me to be his wife.”
