Two reports focused on the man who committed the worst mass shooting in Maine history are set to be released within the next few weeks, the top Army official told federal lawmakers on Tuesday.
The investigations from the Army Reserve and the Army’s inspector general were announced in the weeks after Robert Card II, a 40-year-old reservist from Bowdoin, killed 18 people and injured another 13 in an Oct. 25 shooting at a Lewiston bar and bowling alley. After a massive two-day manhunt, police found Card dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Lisbon.
The Army’s report will come “in a couple more weeks,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said in response to questions from U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, at an appropriations hearing on Tuesday in Washington. It is standard for the Army to conduct investigations into a member’s suicide. The branch has also said criminal investigators are working on the case.
“It has been, as we talked about, very comprehensive,” Wormuth said of the Army investigation. “There are over, I think, 3,000 pages of interviews with witnesses and documents that they’ve collected, which is partly why it’s taken so long.”
Wormuth said the inspector general’s separate report will come after the internal investigations are complete. It is unclear what the two reports will focus on, but Card was exhibiting warning signs in the months before the shooting. They have been the subject of major public scrutiny.
A report conducted for the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office found that the Army downplayed warnings from fellow soldiers. Card’s commander said in April that he didn’t follow up on a hospital’s request to ensure Card attended counseling and lost access to guns. But a state commission criticized the sheriff’s office for not taking Card’s guns before the shooting.
