A member of the Army Reserve’s 3rd Battalion, 304th Regiment lost an important piece of equipment during his training several years ago. The reservist looked everywhere and couldn’t find it. But Robert Card II did.
Any other soldier would have yelled at the reservist for the mistake, the reservist said. Card didn’t. Instead Card, of Bowdoin, used the time to learn more about the reservist, earning his trust and friendship.
“That was an opportunity where he could have just reamed me out,” the reservist said. “But he didn’t. He was always a team player.”
Their interaction is emblematic of how soldiers who served with Card remember him: as reliable, quiet and kind. They do not recognize the Card they knew as the man who committed Maine’s deadliest mass shooting, making the atrocity even harder to understand than it already is.
Three months after Card killed 18 people and wounded 13 others before killing himself, two people who served with Card in the Army Reserve spoke about their struggle to reconcile the violent man Card became with the man they knew personally for years.
The man they knew was a “glue guy,” said one reservist, meaning soldiers understood they could depend on him. Though Card was proficient with a rifle and enjoyed using guns, he didn’t see his time in the Reserve as a way to act on violent aggressions, they said. Instead it was more of a job to him.
The Bangor Daily News called or wrote to 22 former and current members of Card’s Reserve unit and six members of his family to better understand how Card became a mass killer. Two men who used to serve with Card spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fears that the Reserve would retaliate against them.
While they shared more details about who Card was before he committed the mass shooting at Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley and Schemengees Bar and Grille, they continue to have many questions, including the biggest one: Why did he kill so many innocent people?
“I know people say it all the time, but I never would have thought that he was capable of anything remotely like that,” said one reservist who served with Card for years. “When I got the news, I was astounded. I couldn’t believe it, but it’s obviously true. Something had to have happened because that’s not the person I knew.”
In the weeks since the mass shooting, the U.S. Army and Reserve have come under scrutiny for failing to get Card enough help as his mental health collapsed. Witnessing a shift in Card’s demeanor, his fellow soldiers, friends and family members had told the Reserve and local police they were desperately worried about him. One man even predicted Card would commit a mass shooting.
When one of the reservists saw the news that Card was the gunman in Lewiston, he found himself heartbroken not only for the dead but the man who killed them. It felt wrong to mourn a mass shooter, he said. But still he grieved — alone.
“He was a good guy. He was my friend,” he said. “I hate the things he did.”
A ‘glue guy’
Card, a sergeant first class, was not an exceptional soldier who was highly decorated. Being in the Reserve, in a regiment based in Saco, was a job, and he served for more than 20 years without much distinction, one reservist said. Card liked to play horseshoes.
“He wasn’t like this Rambo guy,” he said.
Card could be quiet, which is why he hesitated to join the unit in the beginning.
“He was a quiet guy who didn’t at first enjoy talking to 75 cadets at once, but he became good at it. He was effective, a hard worker,” the reservist said. “You gave him a job, and he did it. He was a ‘glue guy,’ a guy you could count on when he said he was going to do something.”
Until recently, there have been questions about Card’s exact role in the Reserve. While he was officially a petroleum supply specialist, in practice he was responsible for training other soldiers.
Card was an instructor as part of the 3-304th’s Bravo unit, which is responsible for training the future officers of the Army at its U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
The reservists who worked with Card said their unit regularly traveled to West Point in New York, typically in the summer for about two weeks, to teach Army cadets various basic combat skills. Card was one of them.
One of the only major differences between Card and many others in his unit was that he never deployed despite enlisting in the Reserve at the height of the War on Terror.
Reporting by national news organizations has suggested that Card largely taught cadets how to throw and use grenades, and that his exposure to the grenade blasts may have damaged his brain and contributed to his behavioral changes.
But multiple reservists challenged that view, describing how they were all exposed to grenade blasts and that Card was not always a grenade instructor. Everyone in the unit cycles through teaching various aspects of warfare, including not just grenades but marksmanship, navigation, the use of larger machine guns, and basic battle tactics, the reservists said.
Card was a proficient marksman, and he frequently helped the cadets improve their skills on the firing range. But his skills did not stand out, the reservists said. All of the reservists were expected to know how to handle a firearm and were required to maintain a certain level of combat readiness in case they deployed, they said.
‘The cracks just — boom — open up’
The reservists viewed the Card they knew as responsible and steady, even more so than many others they served with, which made his actions over the course of 2023 all the more out of character — and his killings harder to fathom.
In the wake of the shooting, preliminary investigations have painted a picture of Card as a man who mentally unraveled over the last year. That information, the reservists said, makes it seem as if Card did not get the level of help he needed despite clear warning signs and multiple opportunities for intervention throughout 2023.
On May 3, Card’s ex-wife and son told police they were concerned about his mental state and what he might do with the 10 to 15 guns he had gathered from a family property, according to Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office police records.
Card believed that people in public were talking about him even though those people were paying no attention to him, the family members told police. No one has said whether Card was diagnosed with a specific condition.
At that time, the family members said Card had not made any threats with his firearms. And while they were concerned, they didn’t want police to directly contact him for fear it would exacerbate the situation.
Sagadahoc County Deputy Chad Carleton then learned from the Reserve that Card believed other reservists were calling him a sex offender and that soldiers were concerned for his mental well-being. He spoke with Kelvin Mote, an Ellsworth police officer who served in the Reserve with Card, who said he was working with Reserve leadership to “figure out options to get Robert help.”
In June, one of Card’s siblings reached out to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs crisis hotline, twice seeking help for him.
Card’s behavior escalated in the summer when he was at West Point for an annual Reserve training, according to Mote’s communications with the sheriff’s office. On July 15, Card accused three fellow soldiers of calling him a pedophile, saying he would “take care of it.”
Members of Card’s unit helped escort him to a hospital the next day to undergo a mental health evaluation ordered by his commanding officer. He then spent two weeks at a New York mental health treatment facility not affiliated with the military.
As a result of that hospitalization, the Reserve barred Card from handling military weapons. But the prohibition didn’t extend to the civilian world.
“How does a guy like this exhibit all this stuff and is able to get his hands on things that were meant to do one thing and one thing only: kill people?” said one of the reservists who spoke to the BDN.
One of Card’s closest friends, Sean Hodgson, flagged Card again in September after Card made threats to carry out a mass shooting at their unit’s facility in Saco. Card had also punched Hodgson in the face. In an interview with the Associated Press, Hodgson said it took a lot to report Card to his superiors in the Reserve, but he knew he had to.
Hodgson’s warnings appear to have been downplayed by Reserve officials, who said they weren’t credible.
“I did my job, and I went over and beyond it, and I literally spelled it out for them,” he told the AP. “I don’t know how clear I could have gotten.”
One of the reservists who spoke to the BDN said that the series of events are emblematic of the dysfunction of the Army and the Reserve.
“Robert Card is a perfect example of the negligence of the system and the United States Army,” the reservist said. “Here’s a guy who was clearly struggling with something, whether it’s PTSD, his own paranoia, and no one was there to help him. Why was this not prevented?”
The reservist, who has since left the Army, said he was never contacted by the Army or veteran’s affairs after he departed. If people want help, they have to seek it out themselves, which can be incredibly challenging for those in the middle of a crisis, he said.
The other reservist said he can’t entirely blame the Reserve and Card’s fellow reservists for not getting Card more help, even though he wished they had.
The Reserve is a part-time force, unlike the regular Army. When soldiers are not active, commanding officers have no control over them, he said.
Typically, Army reservists meet once a month for about two days and then once a year for two weeks of training. In between those monthly meetings, it is difficult to keep up with soldiers who may be spread across Maine or out of state, the reservist said.
“Sometimes you don’t see people for two or three months, and you don’t know what’s going on,” the reservist said. “There’s no tie-in between civilian and military at that point. And the cracks just — boom — open up.”
Sawyer Loftus is an investigative reporter at the Bangor Daily News. He may be reached at [email protected].