Video: Officers seeking Robert Card’s help before the main mass shooting
The newly released video shows New York police and army personnel seeking Robert Card’s help before they launch a mass shooting in Maine.
Survivors and families of the victims killed in Maine’s most deadly mass shooting have sued the federal government, claiming that they were able to prevent the US military from carrying out the rampage that killed 18 people.
Filming occurred on October 25, 2023, when 40-year-old Robert Card fired at a bar and bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine. He was found dead two days after the massacre from a massacre gunshot wound.
The lawsuit filed on September 2 alleges that Army officials, local police and others were aware of Card’s worsening mental health and increasingly unstable behavior and failed to properly intervene.
“The Army knew he had access to the firearms. The army had promised to remove his gun, but he failed to fulfill that promise,” the lawsuit says. “What’s worse, through its actions and omissions, the military withheld information and actively mislead local law enforcement, thereby preventing others from intervening and separating the cards from his weapon.”
The Army refused to respond to the lawsuit and said it had not commented on the pending lawsuit as a policy issue.
Official reports include details of the failure that led to massive shootings
The Independent Committee, founded by Maine Governor Janet Mills, released a report on the shooting in August 2024. This allegedly involved several failures by Army personnel and local police forces taking steps to seize firearms on cards and intervening when they experienced a mental health crisis.
The report details the months leading up to the shooting in which fellow reserves and families told authorities that the cards became delusional, threatened violence and owned a weapons cache.
At one point he was admitted to a mental hospital in Katona, New York, where he said he had a “hit list” and medical professionals determined he had a “sight to murder.” Nevertheless, he was released from the hospital 19 days later.
A few weeks before the shooting, Card’s friend, who was in his spare unit, contacted the unit’s command after the card had attacked him violently and said he was worried that his friend would “we’re going to snap and do mass shootings.”
Army officials communicated their concerns to local law enforcement, and the Army Reserve Medicine Management Center also tried to reach the card for his treatment. The day before the shooting, the Army Reserve Psychological Health Program was called a card, but he did not answer.
The Army has released its own report detailing several lapses on how the card’s reading units dealt with the reserve’s spiral mental health. The report detailed the gap between procedural failure and communication, resulting in at least three officers discipline in the gunman’s chain of command.
Contribution: n’dea yancey-bragg
