Police in Maine have been accused of abdicating their responsibility in a damaging report that found they had reason to arrest Lewiston shooter Robert Card before he murdered eighteen people.
The panel found that the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office failed to take action under the state’s so-called yellow flag law that may have prevented the shooting.
While Card was judged to be ‘solely responsible’, the authorities missed ‘several opportunities which, if taken, may have changed the course of events’.
Card, a reservist, killed 18 people and injured 13 at a Lewiston bowling alley and bar last October, leading to the largest manhunt in state history.
The independent commission has reviewed the events that led to Card going on his shooting spree, as well as the subsequent response.
The panel found that the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office failed to take action under the so-called Yellow Flag law that may have prevented the shooting. Robert Card can be seen here
The independent commission has reviewed the events that led to Card going on tour, as well as the subsequent response
A temporary memorial on Main Street, Friday, November 3, 2023, Lewiston, Maine
In the report, Sgt. Aaron Skolfield, who responded to a report five weeks before the shooting that Card was suffering from a mental crisis, was criticized.
Skolfield, of the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office, should have realized he had probable cause to initiate a so-called ‘yellow flag’ process in the case of Card.
It allows a judge to temporarily remove someone’s guns during a psychiatric health crisis.
When Skolfield went on leave, no one was tasked with following up or initiating Yellow Flag proceedings.
This was despite the office having ‘sufficient probable cause’ to place Card in protective custody and confiscate his weapons, it said.
In effect, the sheriff’s office turned over responsibility for removing Card’s firearm to his family, “an abdication of law enforcement responsibility,” the panel found.
In testimony before the commission in January, sheriff’s officials defended their response to warning signs about Card’s mental health.
They said their options were limited since Card had committed no crime.
Card killed 18 people in the massacre (pictured) in what has become the deadliest mass shooting of 2023
On October 25, 2023, Robert Card walked into a bowling alley and later a bar in Lewiston Maine and shot 18 people before turning the gun on himself
‘I couldn’t get him to the door. I can’t get him to open the door,’ Skolfield said of his visit to Card’s home for a welfare check in September. “If I had kicked the door in, it would have been a violation of the law.”
Leroy Walker, whose son Joseph was killed in the shootings, said the commission’s finding that the yellow flag law could have been implemented did not reflect what the victims’ families have known all along.
“The commission put it bluntly — that they could have done it, should have done it,” said Walker, an Auburn City Council member.
“What something like this really does is that it brings everything up. It just breaks the heart again.’
Commission Chairman Daniel Wathen said their work was not done and that the preliminary report was intended to provide policymakers and law enforcement with key information they had learned.
“Nothing we do can ever change what happened on that terrible day, but knowing the facts can help provide the answers the victims, their families and the people of Maine need and deserve,” Wathen said in a declaration.
The body of Card, 40, was found at a recycling plant in Lisbon two days after the attacks, after he died by suicide.
Just months earlier on July 16, the police were called and Card was ordered to go to an Army facility to be hospitalized after other soldiers became concerned about him.
Bodycam footage at the time gives a chilling glimpse of Card after he had been involved in an argument and locked himself in his motel room, alerting reservists.
He can be heard telling the state police: ‘They’re scared because I’m going to do something. Because I am able.’
In police body camera footage captured on July 16, Card is ordered to go to an Army facility to be hospitalized after other soldiers became concerned about him
The footage offers a harrowing glimpse of Card after he was involved in an argument and locked himself in his motel room, alerting reservists
An officer can be heard examining the remark, asking Card: ‘What do you mean by that?’
Card, appearing agitated, replies sharply, ‘Nothing’, before being told that he would be taken to an army hospital to speak to a counsellor.
He can also be heard telling police in the footage that people talked behind his back for about six months and started rumors that he was gay and a pedophile.
In the video, Card’s fellow reservists, whose names were redacted, expressed concern that he had lost weight and was just ‘skin and bones’.
They also said his behavior had changed significantly over six months, with a man who identified himself as Card’s first sergeant telling officers that “our concern is that he’s either going to hurt himself or another.”
One of the reservists also described Card as a ‘cannon nut’ who spent $14,000 on binoculars.
The reservist added: ‘I don’t know what he’s capable of. I am not insinuating anything. But I’m just saying he’s got a ton of guns.’
Card was taken to Keller Army Hospital for evaluation by other reservists and ended up spending two weeks in a psychiatric hospital.
Initial investigations have already found missed chances and red flags involving Card were rife, with reports whistleblower colleagues and family members repeatedly raised the alarm about threats he had made in the months before the shooting.
The Ruger .308-caliber rifle used in the Lewiston killings was legally purchased by Card on July 6, less than two weeks before his actions led to his two-week hospitalization, Maine State Police said.
Law enforcement officers stand near armored and tactical vehicles downtown, near a property on Meadow Road, in Bowdoin, Maine, after a mass shooting, Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023
Law enforcement officers carry rifles outside Central Maine Medical Center during an active shooter situation in Lewiston, Maine, Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023
More than 350 state, county and local law enforcement officers across Maine and neighboring states assisted in the search for Card within 24 hours
He was hospitalized after suffering several psychotic episodes and told superiors that he had been hearing voices and threatening the base where he was stationed.
In May last year, police were alerted that Card had become paranoid and they were concerned about his access to weapons.
In August, he was then barred from handling weapons while on duty and declared ineligible for deployment by the Army.
Then in September, reservists were so worried he was about to kill that they told each other to ‘change the password’ to the entrance to their base in Saco.
A text from a Sergeant Hudson reads: ‘Change the access code to the unit gate and be armed if Sergeant First Class Card arrives. Please. I think he’s messed up in the head.
‘And threaten the device elsewhere and elsewhere. I love (him) to death but I don’t know how to help him and he refuses to get help.
These text messages sent by an Army reservist sergeant to his superior in September reveal the extent of concerns about Robert Card
‘I’m afraid he’s going to screw up his life hearing things he thinks he’s heard. Dropped him off, he was worried his guns were still in the car…He still has all his guns.’
In another, he said: ‘I think he’s going to snap and do a mass shooting.’
In Maine, a warning that Card might ‘shoot up’ the Saco arsenal where his reserve unit was based prompted a Sagadahoc County deputy to try to meet with Card at his home in Bowdoin.
In the end, Card was never confronted, and the shooting he went on became the deadliest mass shooting in Maine history.
In December, a 93-page independent report found the Maine sheriff’s response to concerns about Card’s declining mental health was “reasonable.”