A civilian medical contractor for the U.S. Army will testify before the commission investigating the Lewiston mass shooting a week after she did not appear despite receiving a subpoena.
Patricia Moloney will appear during a Zoom meeting scheduled for noon Thursday, according to the state panel reviewing the lead-up and response to an Army Reservist’s rampage at a Lewiston bowling alley and bar on Oct. 25 that left 18 dead and 13 injured in Maine’s deadliest mass shooting on record.
The commission subpoenaed Moloney to testify last Thursday, but she did not appear. Anne Jordan, the commission’s executive director, instead explained during the brief July 11 meeting how the panel had made numerous attempts since early June to contact Moloney. Army officials were cooperating but have no authority to compel a contractor to testify, Jordan added.
Commission spokesperson Kevin Kelley said Wednesday afternoon he did not immediately have more information on what led Moloney to agree to testify this week but added he is looking into getting more details.
An Army Reserve spokesperson previously referred a reporter to a corporation named Sterling Medical for comment on Moloney’s employment status, but Sterling Medical has not responded to emails seeking comment.
The commission did not say where Moloney lives but clarified she is not in Maine. A person tied to the medical professional had told Jordan of a “potential claim of malpractice” with Moloney, but Jordan did not share additional specifics last week.
Gov. Janet Mills formed the seven-member commission after Robert Card II, a 40-year-old Army reservist from Bowdoin, used a rifle he legally purchased earlier in the year to kill 18 people and injure 13 at Just-In-Time Recreation and Schemengees Bar and Grille the evening of Oct. 25. Police found Card dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Lisbon after a two-day manhunt.
The commission heard last week from a nurse who worked at Keller Army Community Hospital in West Point, New York, and evaluated Card after his Army Reserve colleagues drove him there last July due to Card acting erratically and threatening others. Card ended up the next day at Four Winds Hospital in Katonah, New York, where he received psychiatric treatment for about two weeks before returning to Maine.
Card’s family and other reservists had warned police and Army Reserve superiors repeatedly about his declining mental health, paranoia, access to guns and threats to “shoot up” places in the weeks and months leading up to the mass shooting. Boston University experts found “significant evidence of trauma” in the brain of Card, who served for years as a grenade instructor at West Point.
The independent commission plans to issue a final report later this summer, and the Army’s inspector general and Army Reserve are expected to also release the results of separate investigations into the shooting.
The commission’s preliminary report in March faulted the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office and Card’s Army Reserve commander, Jeremy Reamer, for not using Maine’s “yellow flag” law to take away Card’s weapons and for not following the recommendations of New York hospital staff to ensure Card attended counseling and had all weapons removed from his Bowdoin home.
