AUGUSTA, Maine — Gov. Janet Mills and Attorney General Aaron Frey selected the members of the Lewiston mass shooting commission based on their nonpartisanship and experiences in legal, investigative and mental health fields, the governor’s office said Monday.
A Mills spokesperson outlined how the governor and Frey, both Democrats, decided on the seven members who are tasked with reviewing the lead-up and police response to Maine’s deadliest mass shooting on record in which a gunman killed 18 people and injured 13 at a Lewiston bowling alley and bar on Oct. 25.
Monday’s explanation from Mills spokesperson Ben Goodman in response to questions from the Bangor Daily News came after several lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and families of victims have said they wish Mills and Frey included them on the panel, rather than only including current and former lawyers, prosecutors, judges and medical experts.
The panel met last week for the first time and next meets Dec. 14.
A few legislators have also mulled whether the Legislature should conduct its own probe into the shooting. But Goodman told the Bangor Daily News the governor’s office spoke with lawmakers from both parties about the commission prior to its creation and then “engaged directly” with candidates about their “willingness to serve.”
Mills and Frey, with the help of staff, considered people “who were nonpartisan, independent, well-respected and who had substantial relevant experience in the legal, investigative and mental health fields,” Goodman wrote in an email.
The governor and attorney general ultimately selected the commissioners based not only on their experience and impartiality, but also because they are “wholly dedicated to pursuing the facts, wherever they may lead, in an objective manner, biased by no one,” Goodman added.
Former Maine Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Daniel Wathen is chairing the commission. The other members are former U.S. Attorney Paula Silsby; Debra Baeder, Maine’s former chief forensic psychologist; Dr. Anthony Ng, medical director of community services for Northern Light Acadia Hospital; Toby Dilworth, a former assistant U.S. attorney; Geoffrey Rushlau, a former Maine judge and district attorney; and Ellen Gorman, a former high-court justice.
At its first meeting, the commission hired four staff — an executive director, two investigators and a spokesperson — and requested subpoena power, which Mills and Frey said they will ask the Legislature to grant when the new session begins in January.
The subpoena power would allow the panel to compel testimony and access military, medical, police and other records. Officials have not yet shared how much each staff member will earn.
Wathen said he wants the panel to produce a public report detailing its findings within six months and to operate with “maximum transparency.”
The commission is expected to zero in on how family and peers of the gunman, Robert R. Card II, a 40-year-old Army reservist from Bowdoin, had shared concerns with police about his declining mental state and access to firearms several times in the months before the shooting.
The Army Reserve is also conducting two internal investigations into what happened before the shooting, with experts and lawmakers debating whether New York’s red flag law or Maine’s yellow flag law should have been used to help police take away Card’s weapons. Card was training in New York with his Army Reserve unit in July when he began acting erratically and accusing others of calling him a pedophile.
He willingly stayed at a New York psychiatric hospital for two weeks before returning to Maine. A fellow reservist later requested the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office conduct a welfare check on Card, but Card did not come to the door of his home when a deputy knocked in September.
The commission may also review the 48-hour manhunt after the shooting that ended when police found Card dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His body was found in a trailer near a Lisbon recycling center he previously worked at, and police had twice searched the property but overlooked an overflow lot where they eventually found his body on Oct. 27.
