A man has been charged with murder after four people were gunned down in a Maine home and three others were shot and injured on a highway.

Joseph Eaton, 34, of Bowdoin, was arrested and charged with four counts of murder on Tuesday.

It comes after four people were found dead in a home in Bowdoin last night.

They were discovered a short time before three people were shot in their vehicles to the south on Interstate 295 in Yarmouth, 25 miles away, police said.

The shootings were connected, Maine State Police spokesperson Shannon Moss confirmed.

Their identities have not yet been released.

Mr Eaton was expected to appear in court this week.

The highway shootings led to a heavy police presence in Yarmouth, including officers carrying rifles.

At one point, heavily armed officers peered inside the trunk of a car that had apparent bullet holes in the windscreen at a slip road.

Witnesses told reporters they saw one person in handcuffs.

Maine Governor Janet Mills tweeted her concern for the ‘families, friends and loved ones of those impacted by this tragedy.’

She said she was praying for the injured. She said: ‘Like people across Maine, I am shocked and deeply saddened.

‘Acts of violence like we experienced today shake our state and our communities to the core.’

State police Lt. Randall Keaten asked anyone who may have witnessed something or has any information about the Tuesday morning incidents to reach out.

Keaten said: ‘We’ve got vehicles that have been hit by straight gunfire all across that we’re getting reports on, so if anybody has holes in their vehicles, please contact us so that we can follow up with that.

‘A lot happened this morning between those two scenes and those are the people that we want to talk to, those people that were impacted by this.’

Yarmouth is a community of 9,000 about 12 miles north of Portland, the state’s largest city. Bowdoin is a rural farming community with about 3,000 residents.

At the scene in Bowdoin, yellow crime scene tape hung around a home in a wooded area.

About 10 marked and unmarked police vehicles and a crime scene van were parked outside

In Yarmouth, traffic backed up on the interstate as police shut down the southbound lanes, and state, county and local police canvassed the area.

Representatives for the Maine Department of Transportation said they closed the southbound side of I-295 in Yarmouth in late morning at the request of state police.

Police briefly ordered people in nearby neighbourhoods to take shelter.

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