This story will be updated.
AUGUSTA, Maine — The Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office had probable cause to take Lewiston gunman Robert Card II into protective custody under a “yellow flag” law a month before he committed Maine’s deadliest mass shooting on record, the commission investigating Maine’s deadliest mass shooting on record said in a preliminary report Friday.
The decision by supervisors of Sagadahoc County sheriff’s Sgt. Aaron Skolfield in September to turn over the responsibility for removing Card’s firearms to Card’s family “was an abdication of law enforcement’s responsibility,” the commission added.
The interim report released late Friday afternoon is not the final word from the seven-member panel that Gov. Janet Mills and Attorney General Aaron Frey formed in the wake of the Oct. 25 rampage at a Lewiston bowling alley and bar that left 18 dead and 13 injured. A final report is expected this summer before July 1, when the commission must dissolve under a provision in the law granting it subpoena power.
The evening massacre at Just-In-Time Recreation and Schemengees Bar and Grille led to hundreds of law enforcement officers conducting a 48-hour manhunt for gunman Robert Card, a 40-year-old Army reservist from Bowdoin. Card was eventually found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a trailer by a Lisbon recycling center where he previously worked.
The commission has met seven times publicly since November and also privately with Card’s family. It has heard from Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office personnel who tried to reach Card in the weeks and months before the shooting via welfare checks, family members of victims, local and state police, members of Card’s Army Reserve unit and shooting survivors.
A third-party report found Army Reserve leaders downplayed warnings from Card’s fellow soldiers, but several personnel told the commission this month they felt they did all they could to get Card into a New York hospital last summer due to his erratic behavior and stated threats.
Card’s superiors requested the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office conduct welfare checks, but deputies left the Bowdoin residence in September after Card did not answer the door. Police issued a “File 6” notice to other law enforcement agencies to try to locate a potentially “armed and dangerous” Card, but the alert was canceled a week before the mass shooting.
The Army Reserve conducted two internal reviews, and the U.S. Army’s inspector general launched an independent investigation into the military’s handling of Card. At the State House, lawmakers and Mills have proposed various gun-control and mental health-focused measures that are awaiting votes before the Legislature seeks to adjourn by mid-April.
