AUGUSTA, Maine — U.S. Army reservists described their peer’s months of confrontations and paranoia before he carried out Maine’s worst mass shooting on record while testifying to a state commission Thursday, which marked six months since the rampage in Lewiston.
The testimony included details and anecdotes that were both new or already known from months of meetings and hours of interviews the independent panel has conducted since Gov. Janet Mills formed it after the Oct. 25, 2023, mass shooting at a Lewiston bowling alley and bar.
Robert Card, a 40-year-old Army reservist from Bowdoin, killed 18 people and injured 13 before police found him dead two days later of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on the property of the Maine Recycling Corporation he used to work at in nearby Lisbon.
His best friend and fellow reservist, Sean Hodgson, who had warned superiors in September that Card was “going to snap and do a mass shooting,” shared Thursday how Card was mostly an introvert who was kind and would open up to people with time.
“He would give you the shirt off his back,” Hodgson said.
But Hodgson said Thursday he noticed Card began complaining of recycling center colleagues calling him a pedophile, among other things, in July 2022, when the two were temporarily living together.
The paranoia ramped up by January 2023, after Card received hearing aids. Staff Sgt. Daryl Reed recalled Thursday how Card was a “very normal” and “hardworking” guy who loved trading stocks and hunting before Card received hearing aids and began a months-long pattern of accusing others — whether fellow reservists, convenience store clerks or nurses at the New York hospital he stayed at in July — of calling him a “pedophile” or “homosexual” or saying “he had a small package,” referring to genitalia.
After Card began acting erratically while training in West Point, New York, last summer, Army Reserve Master Sgt. Ed Yurek said Thursday he spoke over the phone with Card’s brother, who explained Card had received hearing implants that gave him “superhuman-type hearing.” Ryan Card explained his brother was picking up on conversations and “personalizing all of it.”
Card spent part of his 20-plus years in the reserves training cadets on using grenades. Experts who examined Card’s brain said in March they found “significant evidence of trauma.”
When Card was released after about two weeks of a New York psychiatric hospitalization, Yurek said Ryan Card called him again to express surprise at the release and told him “he’s still the same,” referring to his brother’s behavior.
Yurek was also surprised Card was not kept in the hospital longer, adding he and other reservists initially thought they had succeeded with getting Card help.
Hodgson spent time with Card at the hospital and said Card mentioned he may have to go before a judge. While driving Card back home to Maine after the hospitalization, Hodgson said he continued to complain about people talking about him and about his medication.
Soldier and his family feared Card would seek them out
What was already known before Thursday was that Hodgson texted Kelvin Mote, a first sergeant in Card’s Reserve unit, at 2:04 a.m. on Sept. 15 to share how Card told Hodgson after they went to a casino that night about people calling him a pedophile, punched him and said he intended to shoot up the Army Reserve center in Saco.
After asking Card to pull over so he could get out of the car, Hodgson said he told his friend he loved him and “I’ll never give up on you.”
His warning made it to the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office. Deputy Aaron Skolfield tried unsuccessfully to reach Card on Sept. 15 at his residence before issuing a “File 6” alert to locate Card. Yurek told Saco police the next morning to prepare if Card came to the center that day.
But when Saco police went to the facility, Card’s commander, Jeremy Reamer, reportedly said he only wanted a welfare check and that Hodgson “is not the most credible of our soldiers.”
Reed was concerned Card may seek him out at the base after Card “came at” him while they went to get pizza in New York in July. After Card returned to Maine after the hospitalization, Reed said his wife “was terrified up until October.”
The couple considered seeking a protective order against Card but decided against it to not “stir the hornet’s nest,” said Reed, who is from Winthrop. The night of the shooting, Reed and his family happened to be in the Lewiston area after his daughter’s basketball practice in Auburn. They drove all the way to a Kennebunk hotel after police warned Reed to not go home.
As he learned about a shooting at multiple locations in Lewiston on Oct. 25, Hodgson became emotional Thursday while saying he “knew it was Card.”
Commissioners brought back Reamer this month for additional questioning focused on how he did not follow up on recommendations from New York hospital staff to ensure Card attended counseling and lost access to his weapons, instead relying on the Card family.
The commission’s interim report last month faulted Reamer and found the sheriff’s office had enough probable cause to use Maine’s “yellow flag” law to take Card into protective custody.
Facing a ‘mass homicide event’
Thursday was the ninth time the commission met publicly since November. It expects to release a final report by summer.
The panel also heard Thursday from Cara Cookson, the director of victim services in the Maine attorney general’s office, about the vast amount of work she and fellow victim advocates did to help families and survivors both immediately and long after the shooting.
Cookson said she and other colleagues were in Bar Harbor for an annual conference on Oct. 25 when they learned of the shooting. They set up a “mini command post” at their hotel before heading to Lewiston the next morning.
Within 10 to 15 minutes, Cookson said while tearing up, “it was clear that we were facing a mass homicide event that far exceeded the scope of anything we had faced in Maine.”
