U.S. Army reservists who worked with Maine gunman Robert Card deflected blame Thursday when an independent commission investigating the state’s worst mass shooting questioned whether the military should have tried harder to restrict Card’s access to firearms.
The commission, established by Gov. Janet Mills, has been holding a series of hearings in Augusta to investigate the shooting that left 18 people dead at a bowling alley and then a bar in Lewiston last October. The testimony follows scrutiny about whether enough was done to prevent the massacre.
Card, 40, suffered severe mental health issues that were known to law enforcement and were well documented by the Army for months before the shooting, authorities and his family said.
On Thursday, members of the Army Reserve testified about the two weeks Card spent in a psychiatric hospital in New York last July as well as Card’s later threats to “shoot up” the Saco armory where his unit was headquartered.
When the commission asked whether the Army thought to do something about Card’s access to weapons, Staff Sgt. Matthew Noyes said that “responsibility fell on the local law enforcement.”
Noyes praised the steps his unit took to handle Card’s crisis that summer. He was one of the soldiers who took Card into protective custody in West Point, New York, and drove him to the hospital after their command ordered Card, who was acting erratic, to get evaluated.
Such an order was rare within the Reserve, Noyes said.
“Leaving West Point, I actually felt really good about what we did and felt like we’d done more than most Reserve units would,” he testified. “And that’s not to pat ourselves on the back one bit. It’s just to say that, in my experience, I haven’t seen anything like that before.”
During that roughly hourlong drive to the hospital, Card was silent except for a brief period when he cried, Noyes said.
‘There was nothing I could do’
Kelvin Mote, another reservist, testified that he still believed Card was a threat to himself and others later that September. But the military, he said, had no authority to trigger Maine’s “yellow flag” law, which outlines several steps that must be taken before a weapon can be removed from an individual who poses a danger to himself or others.
A person who is concerned that a family member may be a threat to himself or others must first alert law enforcement, which would then take the family member into protective custody. From there, the family member would need to be evaluated and deemed a threat by a medical professional. Only after a medical diagnosis could a judge approve an order to temporarily remove the firearm.
The Army reservists faced several questions about the yellow flag law, which was criticized as weak after the shooting when questions emerged about why it was not implemented in Card’s case.
Mote said he asked the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office to conduct a welfare check, but the agency did not make contact with Card during two attempts.
“There was nothing I could do,” Mote said. “I had no authority over him.”
A member of the commission countered, saying Mote could have contacted the Army Reserve’s psychological program — a resource made available to service members and their families for “exactly these sorts of situations.”
“You could have contacted them,” she said. “Could you not?”
“Yes, I could have,” Mote responded.
When the panelist asked Mote if he felt he had handled the situation by passing it off to the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office, he said yes.
She asked Mote if he felt “sad” for Card after the shooting. Mote, who moved his family out of harm’s way after he found out Card was the shooter on the lam, said he did not. “Those people were innocent,” he said.
Army reservist Jeremy Reamer, the company’s commander, testified that the Army believed Card’s family would remove his weapons from the home. He said he did not follow up with the family to see if that had been done.
Another Army reservist, Sgt. Jordan Jandreau, said he had learned about the yellow flag law during his training as a Rockland police officer but that the “topic of yellow flag laws had not come up in my experience in the military until this incident.”
Noyes, who is a deputy with the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office, called the requirements “very cumbersome” and said the law “would really need to change” to be effective.
Noyes, who joined the manhunt for Card immediately after the shooting, he outlined several missteps that he believes Maine law enforcement made.
Noyes said he went to the command post and told a state police officer that he knew Card and had pertinent information about Card’s history. The officer spoke to him for less than two minutes, he said, adding that law enforcement also had not spoken to Card’s mother.
The lines of communication were “poor” and “unacceptable,” Noyes said.
When asked by the commission whether Noyes told the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office that Card had spent two weeks in a psychiatric hospital and that he had guns, Noyes said he had not.
That agency was contacted by Card’s family on May 3, 2023, warning that his mental health began declining in January and that he owned firearms. A Sagadahoc County sergeant also went to Card’s home on Sept. 15 and 16 that year, but he was not there. That triggered an “attempt to locate” alert, warning that Card was known to be armed and dangerous.
Card’s traumatic brain injury
Card enlisted in the Army Reserve in December 2002 and had no combat deployments, officials said. He was a senior instructor who was involved with hand-grenade trainings.
Card died by suicide during the massive manhunt. On Wednesday, his family released the findings of a post-mortem study of his brain that found Card had traumatic brain injuries that “likely played a role” in his behavioral changes in the final months of his life.
The study was requested by the Maine chief medical examiner’s office and carried out by Boston University CTE Center.
Card’s family said they believed he was exposed to thousands of low-level blasts at the Army hand grenade training range.
They said that the study’s finding does not excuse the “horrific suffering he caused” but that they hope it raises awareness of traumatic brain injury among service members.
“While we cannot go back, we are releasing the findings of Robert’s brain study with the goal of supporting ongoing efforts to learn from this tragedy to ensure it never happens again,” the family said in a statement.
The commission issued subpoenas for Thursday’s testimony. It will issue a formal public report when its investigation is over.
Other people who have testified before the commission this year include family members of the shooting victims, survivors and members of local and state law enforcement agencies.
