AUGUSTA, Maine — Gov. Janet Mills and Attorney General Aaron Frey appointed the former chief justice of Maine’s high court to lead the panel investigating the events leading up to the Lewiston mass shooting and the two-day search for the killer.
Mills announced last week she would set up an independent commission in the wake of the Oct. 25 shooting at a bar and bowling alley that killed 18 people and injured 13 others. It is Maine’s deadliest mass shooting ever and the 10th-deadliest in U.S. history.
The governor and Frey, both Democrats, said Thursday in a news release the “Independent Commission to Investigate the Facts of the Tragedy in Lewiston” will “determine the facts” of the shooting, including the months leading up to it and the police response.
Seven members will serve on the commission. The news release said the commission will “conduct its work in public to the greatest extent possible” and issue a report.
Former Maine Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Daniel Wathen will chair the panel. In a statement, he said he was “deeply honored and humbled by the responsibility.”
In a follow-up phone call, he would not discuss the steps the panel would take until an organizational meeting that he said would be scheduled soon. When asked if that would be public, he referred a reporter to a spokesperson.
The other members are Debra Baeder, Maine’s former chief forensic psychologist; Toby Dilworth, a former assistant U.S. attorney; Ellen Gorman, a former high-court justice; Geoffrey Rushlau, a former Maine judge and district attorney; Dr. Anthony Ng, medical director of community services for Northern Light Acadia Hospital; and former U.S. Attorney Paula Silsby.
BDN writer Michael Shepherd contributed to this report.
