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The Army Reserve and a Maine sheriff’s department knew of a reservist’s deteriorating mental health five months before he carried out America’s deadliest mass shooting this year.
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Chelsia Rose Marcius are in Maine reporting on the mass shooting in Lewiston and on the gunman who carried out the massacre. They welcome information through nytimes.com/tips.
The Army Reserve and a Maine sheriff’s department were aware of a reservist’s deteriorating mental health more than five months before he killed 18 people in Lewiston, Maine, according to records released on Monday. Just six weeks ago, the records show, he had grown increasingly paranoid, punched a friend and said he was going to carry out a shooting spree.
But there is no indication in the documents that any law enforcement officials ever made contact with the reservist, Robert R. Card II, 40, who carried out the deadliest mass shooting in America this year and set off a two-day manhunt before he was found dead.
The warnings about Mr. Card were far more explicit than Maine officials had publicly acknowledged in the days since the shooting on Oct. 25. They came from Mr. Card’s family members — who believed he was hearing voices — and his Army Reserve unit in Saco, Maine, and were investigated by the Sheriff’s Office in Sagadahoc County, where Mr. Card lived.
Mr. Card’s family told a sheriff’s deputy in May that Mr. Card had become angry and paranoid starting early this year. In particular, he had begun to claim — wrongly, the family said — that people were accusing him of being a pedophile.
When the deputy, Chad Carleton, reached out to Mr. Card’s base in Saco, he learned that people there already had “considerable concern” for Mr. Card’s mental health, according to a report that the deputy wrote.
Two months later, in July, Mr. Card was treated at a psychiatric hospital in New York for two weeks, according to a later report, after an incident at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point. He had accused “several other soldiers” of calling him a pedophile, shoved one and made veiled threats that he would “take care” of things, the report said.
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Police Were Told Maine Gunman Had Threatened to Carry Out Shooting Spree – The New York Times
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