LEWISTON, Maine (AP) — Both the Army Reserve and police missed opportunities to intervene in a gunman’s psychiatric crisis and initiate steps to seize weapons from the spiraling reservist responsible for the deadliest shootings in Maine history, according to the final report released Tuesday by a special commission created to investigate the attacks, which killed 18 people.
The independent commission, which held 16 public meetings, heard from scores of witnesses and reviewed thousands of pages of evidence, reiterated its earlier conclusion that Maine law enforcement officers had authority under the state’s yellow flag law, but didn’t use it, to seize reservist Robert Card’s guns and put him in protective custody weeks before the shootings.
The 215-page report also faulted the Army Reserve for failing to do more to ensure Card’s health and deal with his weapons. And it pointed out that no one used New York’s red flag law to initiate steps to seize the gunman’s weapons when he was hospitalized last summer, even though the law had been used on non-New York residents before.
The commission, created by Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, announced its conclusions at Lewiston City Hall, less than 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the two sites where the shootings took place Oct. 25, 2023.
“Our ability to heal — as a people and as a state — is predicated on the ability to know and understand, to the greatest extent possible, the facts and circumstances surrounding the tragedy in Lewiston. The release of the independent commission’s final report marks another step forward on that long road to healing,” the governor said in a statement.
Although the report contained no major surprises, the commission’s chair, Daniel Wathen, noted the facts laid out in the document can be used by others to make changes to prevent future tragedies.
Megan Vozzella, who lost her husband two weeks shy of their first anniversary, expressed through an American Sign Language interpreter that she wants accountability for those who failed to act to stop the shootings.
“We are dealing with grief, loss of our loved ones. And it’s a journey. All we can do is learn from this and make our lives better,” she said, likening the process to dealing with broken pieces. “It’s like we’re walking through the shards,” she said.
Ben Gideon, a lawyer for Vozzella and other relatives of those who died, described the shootings as the product of a dangerous intersection of gun ownership and mental illness with failures to intervene that were outlined in the report.
“At the end of the day, what happened here was a pairing of someone who was known to be paranoid, delusional and suffering from a diagnosed psychosis with someone who owned numerous weapons of warfare,” Gideon said.
The commission began its work a month after the mass shootings by Card, who killed his victims at a bowling alley and a bar and then took his own life. Over nine months, there has been emotional testimony from family members and survivors of the shooting, law enforcement officials, U.S. Army Reserve personnel and others.
The commission praised the swift response by police to the shootings but also noted what Wathen, a former chief justice of Maine’s highest court, described Tuesday as “utter chaos” as hundreds of law enforcement officers arrived to search for the gunman. The only recommendation issued by the commission was for state police to conduct an after-action review.
Family members and fellow reservists said Card had exhibited delusional and paranoid behavior months before the shootings. He was hospitalized by the Army during training in July 2023 in New York, where his unit was training West Point cadets, but Army Reserve officials acknowledged that no one made sure Card was taking his medication or complying with his follow-up care at home in Bowdoin, Maine.
The starkest warning came in September text from a fellow reservist: “I believe he’s going to snap and do a mass shooting.”
The commission report contained new details of Card’s time at a private psychiatric hospital — Four Winds in Katonah, New York — where Card acknowledged having a “hit list” and officials planned to ask a judge to extend Card’s hospitalization. But the court hearing never happened, and his psychiatrist felt the hospital’s request would have been unsuccessful, given Card’s stabilization and progress and his agreement to continue medications and participate in therapy. The psychiatrist thought he was safe to discharge after 19 days.
The report also took up New York’s red flag law but didn’t reach a conclusion on whether it should have been used to remove Card’s weapons while he was in New York. An Army health care worker testified he didn’t think he could initiate action to remove guns from someone who was not a New York resident. The report, however, noted that petitions were successfully initiated under New York’s extreme risk protection law against nonresidents, though it was unclear if the law could have been enforced at the time in Maine.
Army officials conducted their own investigation after the shootings that Lt. Gen. Jody Daniels, then the chief of the Army Reserve, said found “a series of failures by unit leadership.” Three Army Reserve leaders were disciplined for dereliction of duty, according to the report. The Army said in a statement Tuesday that it’s “committed to reviewing the findings and implementing sound changes to prevent tragedies like this from recurring.”
The commission report noted that the last call to Card’s cellphone was from the Army Reserve Psychological Health Program the day before the shooting. He hung up when the caller identified herself. That same day, he also received the last of five emails from the Army Reserve Medical Management Center; he didn’t respond to any of them, the report said.
After the shootings, Maine’s Legislature passed new gun laws for the state, which has a tradition of hunting and firearms ownership, after the shootings. A three-day waiting period for gun purchases went into effect this month.
In addition to Wathen, the seven-member commission included two former federal prosecutors; two additional former judges, including a former member Maine’s highest court; the state’s former chief forensic psychologist; and a private psychiatrist who is an executive at a psychiatric hospital.
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Sharp reported from Portland, Maine. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Kathy McCormack in New Hampshire and Lisa Rathke in Vermont.