Five family members of victims and one survivor of the Lewiston mass shooting met with Maine’s congressional delegation Thursday and said the lawmakers agreed with their call for independent military reviews into the gunman.
This week’s trip to Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., came about six weeks after a 40-year-old Army reservist from Bowdoin killed 18 people and injured 13 at a Lewiston bowling alley and bar on Oct. 25 in Maine’s deadliest mass shooting on record and the country’s deadliest this year.
The families of the Lewiston shooting victims and a survivor, all of whom were shot at Schemengees Bar and Grille, traveled to Washington for closed-door discussions with U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King and Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden.
The group was meeting later Thursday afternoon with the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, one day after the nation’s latest headline-grabbing shooting in which a gunman killed three people on a Las Vegas university campus before police fatally shot him.
The Maine contingent included Alan Nickerson, the survivor; Arthur Barnard and Kristy Strout, the father and widow of Arthur Strout; Leroy Walker and Tracey Walker, the father and widow of Joe Walker; and Elizabeth Seal, the widow of Josh Seal.
The group called for the inspectors general for the U.S. Army and Department of Defense to conduct independent investigations into missed warning signs and how to prevent another shooting from happening. They said King, Collins, Pingree and Golden agreed with the need for independent probes and vowed to ensure the reviews happen in a timely manner.
“We’re going to hammer the heck out of anyone that doesn’t stand with us,” Leroy Walker, an Auburn city councilor, said. “…Someone has to make sure these laws are enforced and make sure nobody can do that again.”
While no independent probes are underway, the Army Reserve launched two internal investigations into what happened before the Lewiston carnage, and Gov. Janet Mills and Attorney General Aaron Frey appointed seven members to a commission that has already met once and is tasked with reviewing the lead-up and police response to the shooting.
King and Collins have asked the Army’s inspector general to investigate why officials did not trigger New York’s “red flag” law or Maine’s “yellow flag” law that are both designed to take away weapons from dangerous people.
Last week, King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, unveiled a bill that would limit sales of gas-operated semi-automatic weapons like the one used by the Lewiston gunman and also ban bump stocks and high-capacity magazines. It currently has no Republican cosponsors and faces tall odds in passing both a divided Senate and GOP-controlled House.
Collins, a Republican, is drafting legislation that would direct the military to “fully utilize state crisis intervention laws,” her spokesperson said. Golden and Pingree have not introduced bills responding to the shooting, but Golden said he would no longer oppose an assault-style weapons ban, and Pingree has long called for such a ban.
Attorneys from Maine-based law firms representing Lewiston families and survivors — Travis Simmons with Berman & Simmons and Benjamin Gideon with Gideon Asen — escorted the group Thursday. Two American Sign Language interpreters also joined Seal, who is deaf and whose husband was among four deaf victims killed while playing in their weekly cornhole league at Schemengees.
No families have filed lawsuits yet in connection to the October shooting, but the law firms have sent notices to preserve evidence to more than two dozen entities.
After a 48-hour manhunt, police found the Lewiston gunman, Robert R. Card II, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a trailer by the Lisbon recycling center where he once worked.
The Army said Card began acting erratically and accused his fellow soldiers of calling him a pedophile while training with his unit in West Point, New York, in July. He spent two weeks at a psychiatric hospital, and after returning to Maine on Aug. 3, the Army ruled he should not have a weapon, handle ammunition or participate in “live-fire activity,” per an Army spokesperson.
Card’s family and a fellow reservist had warned police in May and in September about his mental state, threats to commit a shooting and access to guns. A Sagadahoc County sheriff’s deputy went to Card’s residence on Sept. 16, knocked on the door and could hear him moving inside, but Card did not come to the door.
