Before Mass Shooting, Army Supervisors Ignored Advice

A commission that investigated the deadliest mass shooting in Maine's history released its final findings Tuesday, saying police and the Army missed opportunities "that, if taken, might have changed the course of these tragic events." Army reservist Robert Card killed 18 people at a bar and a bowling alley in Lewiston before taking his own life on Oct. 25 last year. In the months before the shooting, friends and other reservists had warned that he was showing paranoid and delusional behavior, the AP reports. Less than six weeks before the shooting, a longtime friend warned their Army supervisor: "I believe he's going to snap and do a mass shooting."

• Commission chair Daniel Wathen, former chief justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, said Tuesday that "Robert Card is totally responsible for his own conduct, solely responsible," the Boston Herald reports. "We will never know if he might still have committed a mass shooting even if someone had managed to remove his firearms before Oct. 25," Wathen said. "But the Commission unanimously found that there were several opportunities that, if taken, might have changed the course of these tragic events.

• One of the commission's main findings, released in an interim report in March, was that the Sagadahoc County Sheriff's Office had cause to "take Card into protected custody under Maine's Yellow Flag Law and initiate a petition to confiscate any firearms he possessed or over which he had control."
• Wathen said another main finding was that the leaders of Card's Army reserve unit "failed to exercise their authority over him and to undertake necessary steps to reduce the threat he posed to the public," the Herald reports. He said the 40-year-old's commanding officers were aware of his "auditory hallucinations, increasingly aggressive behavior, collection of guns, almost comments about his intentions." Wathen said the sheriff's office might have acted more aggressively if the reserve unit had shared more information.
• The unit leaders "ignored recommendations of Card's mental health providers to stay engaged in his care and take steps to remove weapons from his home," Wathen said.

• Card was hospitalized by the Army during training in New York in July 2023. The commission looked into whether Card's weapons should have been removed under New York's red flag law. It didn't reach a conclusion, but noted that the law was used on other occasions to remove guns from nonresidents, the AP reports.
• Wathen said that while law enforcement showed bravery and professionalism, there was "utter chaos" at times in the hours after the shooting as hundreds of officers went to Lewiston, the Portland Press Herald reports. The commission called for a full after-action review by state police.
• Maine Gov. Janet Mills said she would review the final report and offer her views next week. "The release of the Independent Commission's final report marks another step forward on the long road to healing," she said. The state brought in a series of gun control measures after the shooting, including one that strengthened the yellow flag law.

(More Maine mass shooting stories.)