BREWER – State police detectives and Brewer police were investigating a fatal shooting that claimed the life of a 47-year-old man early Monday evening.

The identity of the dead man was not released late Monday night pending notification of his family members, but the man came from out of state, said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.

The shooting at 43 Maple St. was reported at about 6 p.m. and police cruisers from the state police and the Brewer and Holden police departments lined the largely darkened dead-end road, lit up by the blue and white flashing lights from two cruisers. Authorities taped off the street at its intersection with Winter Street, three houses down from where police discovered the body.

A representative of the state medical examiner’s office was also on scene and the body was taken by a local funeral home in preparation for being taken to Augusta where an autopsy was expected to be done.

Acting Brewer Police Chief Dan Green said investigators were talking with a man about the shooting, but Green stopped short of saying the man was in custody.

“I can’t say what his involvement was or might have been, but they are speaking with someone at this time,” Green said about 7 p.m. The man was cooperating with police, Green said.

Detective Sgt. Stephen Pickering of the Maine State Police said the Attorney General’s Office hadn’t determined what charges, if any, would be filed. Pickering confirmed that the man was not in custody.

The investigation continued late into the night and investigators were canvassing the neighborhood, looking to talk with anyone who may have heard or seen something.

Neighbors and friends of the people involved stood by the yellow tape, anxious and wanting to know more about what happened. Some were allowed through by police.

Pickering said the specifics of the incident were still under investigation, but that the dead man had been fighting with the woman he lived with in the apartment. He said the woman then went upstairs for help.

“An altercation ensued and the guy got shot,” Pickering said.

Les Spaulding has lived on the street for 50 years. It’s where his children grew up and where his family’s scrap-metal business, Spaulding & Son, is located, next door to the two-apartment home where the shooting took place.

“It was a quiet neighborhood,” said Spaulding, who said he’s never seen anything like this.

Doug Michaud lives on South Main Street near the scene of the investigation and often walks his dog along Maple Street and neighboring streets late at night. He doesn’t venture as far as the home where the shooting took place, but he said he’s seen police cruisers there quite frequently in what is otherwise a nice, quiet neighborhood.

He estimated that the police have been called there a dozen times or more a month and that he sometimes sees a man leave the apartment, only to return later when things have quieted down and the police have left.

Information about when or if Brewer police officers had previously been called to the apartment wasn’t available Monday night, Green said.