Leaders of the Lewiston mass shooter’s Army Reserve unit downplayed warnings from his fellow reservists in the months before the attack that Robert R. Card II was a real danger, according to a new report by an independent investigator.
The review reveals new details about the Army Reserve’s response to Card’s threats and apparent mental deterioration leading up to Maine’s deadliest mass shooting on Oct. 25. Despite one of Card’s fellow reservists texting a superior to warn him that he believed Card would “snap and do a mass shooting,” leaders from Card’s unit told local police the reservist was being an alarmist.
A month and a half later, Card killed 18 people and injured 13 more.
The investigation concluded that the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office acted soundly in September and found no credible information that the office could have used to invoke Maine’s yellow flag law to confiscate Card’s guns. Attorney Michael A. Cunniff of the law firm McCloskey, Mina, Cunniff & Frawley completed the review, which the sheriff’s office released Thursday.
While the report cleared the sheriff’s office, it said:
— Members of Card’s Reserve unit were so concerned that Card might attack the Reserve’s facility in Saco that they contacted police in the early morning hours of Sept. 16 to ask local law enforcement to be prepared.
— Despite these concerns, Reserve leaders told local law enforcement that they didn’t want to “tie up local law enforcement” and that a reservist’s reported concerns that Card would commit a mass shooting were “over the top.”
— Army Reserve leaders relied on Card’s fellow reservists and family to take any personal weapons Card may have had but never verified they did.
— Instead of relying on Maine law enforcement to handle concerns about Card’s threats, Reamer told local cops that Card’s fellow reservists, who are also Maine and New Hampshire law enforcement officers, would “de-escalate and handle it.”
‘Not the most credible of our soldiers’
About a month and a half before Card’s rampage, a reservist only identified as “Staff Sergeant Hodgson” texted Kelvin Mote, a first sergeant in Card’s Reserve unit and an Ellsworth police officer, at 2:04 a.m..
“Change the passcode to the unit gate and be armed if sfc Card does arrive. Please. I believe he’s messed up in the head,” Hodgson said in the texts on Sept. 15. “I believe he is going to snap and do a mass shooting.”
According to Hodgson, earlier that night he and Card had traveled to a casino, and, as they left, Card talked about people calling him a pedophile and got angry. When Hodgson told him to stop, Card punched him and said he intended to shoot up the Army Reserve center in Saco.
The string of early morning texts prompted Mote to contact Corey Bagley, an Ellsworth police detective, who then called the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office to share Hodgson’s concerns, according to the report.
Hodgson wasn’t the only member of Card’s unit that was worried.
After trying to contact Card on Sept. 15 to no avail, Sagadahoc County Deputy Aaron Skolfield filed a statewide alert attempting to locate him. According to new details released in the review, that’s when Lt. Ed Yurek of the Brunswick Police Department called the Saco Police Department to make sure it was prepared in case Card showed up to attack the Reserve facility.
Yurek called Saco police Sgt. Monica Fahy at 2:17 a.m. on Sept. 16 to see if her department had seen Skolfield’s alert, the report said. In that call, Yurek told Fahy that he was part of Card’s Army Reserve unit and warned that Card would likely be at the Reserve facility in Saco in the morning as his unit had a scheduled training that day.
According to the report, Yurek told Fahy he was responsible for Card being admitted for two weeks at a private mental health facility in New York in July.
When Saco police went to the Reserve facility the next morning, Card’s commander, Jeremy Reamer, told the officers that all he wanted was a well-being check to make sure Card was “good,” according to the report.
Reamer told the officers that he knew Card was angry that members of his unit had him evaluated while he was in New York on an assignment for the Army Reserve, but Card hadn’t made any direct threats.
What’s more, Reamer told the officers that Hodgson, the soldier who raised concerns about Card committing a mass shooting, wasn’t credible.
“Captain Reamer highlighted that Staff Sergeant Hodgson sent the text message at ‘two something in the morning … so, was he [Hodgson] drunk?’” Reamer said, according to the report. He “‘is not the most credible of our soldiers.’”
Then Reamer told the Saco police officers they weren’t needed. He had talked with Card earlier that day, he said, and Card had told him he wasn’t going to make it to training, the report said.
At the same time, Skolfield, the Sagadahoc County deputy, was still trying to contact Card where he lived in Bowdoin, until Reamer called him off.
‘I don’t want you guys to get hurt’
Skolfield knocked on the door of Card’s house on Sept. 16. Although he believed Card was inside, he went back to his cruiser when Card didn’t come to the door, according to his police report.
While he sat in his police car, he spoke on the phone to Reamer who told Skolfield that Card had never made any specific threats and that an Army Reserve assessment of Card suggested he was not an imminent danger to anyone, according to the review.
At the same time, Reamer told Skolfield that Card could be uncooperative and that it would not be sensible for law enforcement officers to “push” the situation and create a confrontation that would result in police having to use force on him. The Army Reserve “only wanted a well-being check verifying that Mr. Card was home and alive,” the report said.
“I don’t want you guys to get hurt or do anything that would push you guys in — in a compromising position and have to make a decision,” Reamer said to Skolfield.
Reamer also told Skolfield that the Army Reserve had attempted to “fact-check” the information from Hodgson’s messages, and, because Hodgson failed to describe a specific threat, Reamer questioned the validity of the text messages, according to the report.
While Reamer said the Army Reserve was obligated to treat Hodgson’s warnings seriously, the report said Reamer believed “the message must also be taken ‘with a grain of salt.’”
Skolfield, the deputy who went to Card’s home, also spoke with Mote about Card. According to the report, Mote told Skolfield that he believed Hodgson’s messages were “over the top” and that Hodgson was being “an alarmist.”
In his conversation with Reamer, Skolfield said he would need to deem Card a danger to himself or others to initiate Maine’s yellow flag law and potentially take away his weapons. But he questioned whether doing so would irritate Card and essentially “throw a stick of dynamite into a pool of gas,” according to a transcript of their phone conversation.
Reamer told Skolfield that he believed Card’s family was supposed to remove his guns and that it “supposedly” happened, but he didn’t verify himself because he lives in New Hampshire. According to Skolfield’s report, Card’s brother, Ryan, and their father, Robert, had not yet secured any guns from Robert R. Card II.
“Well, this just kinda sucks,” Skolfield told Reamer.