A sergeant with the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office, whose response before the Lewiston mass shooting has recently been criticized, has filed to run for sheriff.
Sgt. Aaron Skolfield filed to run as a Republican back in February, according to a filing with the Maine Ethics Commission.
Skolfield is currently the only Republican in the race. He’s expected to face off against his current boss, Sheriff Joel Merry, who has filed to run for reelection as a Democrat.
Skolfield’s actions have been criticized in wake of the Lewiston mass shooting. He was the deputy responsible for conducting a welfare check on Robert Card II last September after complaints about Card’s erratic and threatening behavior.
In a report released last week, the independent commission investigating the shooting wrote that Skolfield should have realized that he had probable cause to take away Card’s weapons under Maine’s yellow-flag law.
The commission said Skolfield only made “limited attempts” to have a face-to-face meeting with Card. The report also noted Skolfield failed to consult agency records on previous complaints about Card, and failed to ask for help from other law enforcement agencies.
The commission said when Skolfield went on leave, the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office failed to assign another deputy to take Card into custody or begin the yellow-flag process.
The commission report also criticizes the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office for putting Card’s family in charge of taking away his firearms, calling it “an abdication of law enforcement’s responsibility.” The commission said this decision shifted what was law enforcement’s responsibility onto civilians.
The report says even after shifting the responsibility of removing Card’s guns to his family, the sheriff’s office failed to follow up to make sure that the firearms were in a safe and secure location.
In the weeks and months after the shooting, leadership within the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office has defended Skolfield and the agency’s response as a whole.
“Our deputies believed that the matter with Mr. Card had been resolved. That he posed no risk to himself or to others,” Merry told the commission back in January.
The sheriff’s office also released a third-party report back in December, which it commissioned and paid for, that found the agency “responded reasonably under the circumstances” to warning signs related to Card.
Skolfield did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the commission’s report and on the race for sheriff.
