Final report outlines missed opportunities to prevent Maine’s deadliest shooting

By Patrick Whittle and David Sharp, The Associated Press

LEWISTON, Maine — Both the Army Reserve and police missed opportunities to intervene in a gunman’s psychiatric crisis and take steps to confiscate the weapons of the troubled reservist responsible for the deadliest shootings in Maine history, according to the final report released Tuesday by a special commission created to investigate the attacks that killed 18 people.

The independent commission, which held 16 public meetings, heard dozens of witnesses and reviewed thousands of pages of evidence, reiterated its earlier conclusion that Maine state police officers had the authority under the Yellow Flag Law but failed to use it to confiscate reservist Robert Card’s weapons and place him in protective custody weeks before the shootings.

The 215-page report also faulted the Army Reserve for not doing more to ensure Card’s health and care for his weapons, and noted that no one used New York’s Red Flag Law to take steps to confiscate the shooter’s weapons when he was hospitalized last summer, even though the law had been used on non-New York residents before.

The commission, appointed by Democratic Governor Janet Mills, announced its conclusions on October 25, 2023, at Lewiston City Hall, less than three miles from the two locations where the shootings occurred.

“Our ability to heal – as a people and as a state – rests on the ability to know and understand as fully as possible the facts and circumstances of the tragedy in Lewiston. The release of the independent commission’s final report is another step on that long road to healing,” the governor said in a statement.

While the report does not contain any major surprises, Commission Chairman Daniel Wathen pointed out that the facts presented in the document could also be used by others to bring about change and thus prevent future tragedies.

Megan Vozzella, who lost her husband two weeks before the first anniversary of her death, spoke through an American Sign Language interpreter and said she wants to hold accountable those who did not take action to stop the shootings.

“We deal with grief and the loss of our loved ones. And it’s a journey. We can only learn from it and make our lives better,” she said, comparing the process to dealing with broken pieces. “It’s like walking through the pieces,” she said.

Ben Gideon, an attorney for Vozzella and other relatives of the dead, described the shootings as the result of a dangerous combination of gun ownership and mental illness, as well as the failure to intervene described in the report.

“Ultimately, this was a mating between an individual who was known to be paranoid and delusional and suffering from a diagnosed psychosis and someone who possessed numerous weapons of war,” Gideon said.

The commission began its work a month after the mass shooting by Card, who killed his victims at a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston before taking his own life. Over nine months, it heard emotional testimony from family members and survivors of the shooting, law enforcement officers, members of the U.S. Army Reserve and others.

The commission praised the police’s swift response to the shooting, but also pointed to what Wathen, a former chief justice of Maine’s highest court, described Tuesday as “utter chaos” when hundreds of police officers arrived to search for the shooter.

Family members and fellow reservists said Card had been exhibiting delusional and paranoid behavior for months before the shootings. He was hospitalized by the Army in July 2023 while training in New York, where his unit was training West Point cadets, but Army Reserve officials acknowledged that no one made sure Card took his medications or followed his aftercare at home in Bowdoin, Maine.

The clearest warning came in a text message from a fellow reservist in September: “I think he’s going to freak out and commit a massacre.”

The commission report included new details about Card’s stay at a private psychiatric hospital – Four Winds in Katonah, New York – where Card admitted to being on a “death list,” and officials planned to ask a judge to extend Card’s hospital stay. But the court hearing never took place, and his psychiatrist felt the hospital’s request would have been unsuccessful because Card’s condition had stabilized and progressed and he had agreed to continue taking medication and attending therapy. The psychiatrist felt he was safe to be released after 19 days.

The report also looked at New York’s red flag law, but did not reach a conclusion on whether it should have been used to initiate the seizure of Card’s weapons during his hospital stay at Four Winds. An Army health worker testified that he thought the law only applied to New York residents. However, the report found that between 2021 and June 2024, petitions were successfully initiated in New York against at least 10 non-residents like Card.

After the shootings, Army officials conducted their own investigation. Lt. Gen. Jody Daniels, then commander of the Army Reserve, said they found “a number of failures in unit leadership.” Three Army Reserve leaders were disciplined for dereliction of duty, according to the report.

Following the shootings, the legislature of Maine, which has a long tradition of hunting and gun ownership, passed new gun laws. This month, a three-day waiting period for gun purchases went into effect.

In addition to Wathen, the seven-member commission included two former federal prosecutors, two other former judges, including a former member of the Maine Supreme Court, the state’s former chief forensic psychologist and a private psychiatrist who serves as chief of staff at a mental health clinic.

Sharp reported from Portland, Maine. Associated Press writers Kathy McCormack in New Hampshire and Lisa Rathke in Vermont contributed to this report.