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Steve Righini, Another Dude At The Intersection Of Radicalization And Mental Health

A northern Maine town of 400 people for this one.

Ted Bauer
4 min readFeb 13, 2025

The basic story on Steve Righini seems to be that he lived in a small northern Maine town called Portage Lake, which had about 400 people in it. (We previously had a pretty bad mass shooter in Maine, too.) From what I can infer, Righini was 29, and had either a four-week-old or a four-month-old. His wife/girlfriend/baby mama was 18. If you do that math, it’s quite possible the relationship was illegal, but we can gloss that over for one second.

Sometime in January, he pushed his wife/baby mama into a wall, and she called the cops, and when the cops came, he got into standoff with them — which involved the four-week-old (OK, I just saw it in the screenshot). This guy killed a canine dog and wounded an officer, but he was also eventually killed. A couple of people on Reddit have come forward (and you never know how true those posts are) saying they grew up with him and he was always a little bit crazy. He frequently ranted about transgender rights, abortion, and has a Facebook post where he asks Elon Musk and Kanye West for “leadership roles” in “shaping the world.”

Here is a video that covers some of it:

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Ted Bauer
Ted Bauer

Written by Ted Bauer

I write about a lot of different topics, from work to masculinity to relationships and social dynamics, I.e. modern friendship. Pleasure to be here.

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