AUBURN, Maine — The shooter who killed 18 people at a Lewiston bowling alley and bar last week believed those businesses were broadcasting online that he was a pedophile, according to documents released by the Maine State Police on Tuesday.
Shortly after the shootings last Wednesday, an interview subject told police that 40-year-old Army reservist Robert R. Card II of Bowdoin had been “delusional” since a breakup in February and believed businesses and people, including family members who helped investigators in the hours following the shooting, were broadcasting that he was a pedophile.
Those businesses included Just-In-Time Recreation and Schemengees Bar and Grille Restaurant, the two sites targeted by Card on Wednesday. Card’s purported delusions mirror those reported to Maine police on two separate occasions dating back to early May. They also amount to the first public discussion of Card’s motive for the attacks.
One of Card’s brothers told police the night of the shootings that he had played cornhole with the shooter at Schemengees in the past. At that time, Card had falsely accused the bar’s manager, Joseph Walker, of calling him gay.
Walker was among those killed in Card’s attack on the bar, which came during a cornhole competition for members of the deaf community. That shooting came just minutes after Card attacked the bowling alley in a suburban area on the other side of the city.
Another 13 people were injured between the two sites of the mass shooting, which amounted to the deadliest such incident in the U.S. this year and the deadliest in Maine’s modern history. After a two-day manhunt, Card was found dead Friday from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on the property of a Lisbon recycling center at which he used to work.
The disclosures came in dozens of pages of documents released by the Maine State Police in support of applications for warrants in Card’s case on Tuesday afternoon. They showed police scrambling in the hours after the shooting to gain access to Card’s home, vehicle, cellphone and other electronic devices while he remained at large after the shootings.
By then, some of Card’s family members and close friends had already given police a reasonably complete picture of Card’s deteriorating mental health and his large number of guns, including assault-style rifles. Police have said one rifle was left in Card’s vehicle at a Lisbon boat launch, while he had another rifle and a handgun with him when he died.
Card thought Gowell’s Shop and Save, a supermarket in Litchfield, and Mixers Nightclub and Lounge in Sabattus were among the businesses broadcasting that he was a pedophile. Those delusions intersected with his breakup and when he started wearing hearing aids, police were told.
A brother of Card told police he and his father tried to help Card and convinced him to let them change the code on Card’s gun safe for a period of time a few months before the mass shooting but that Card had a key to the safe and access to his firearms prior to the shootings.
Police were also told that Card had met a previous romantic partner at a cornhole competition at Schemengees. After the shootings, Card’s brother told police that he was worried the shooter may target Maine Recycling Corp., the Lisbon business where Card’s body was later found in an overflow lot that police had overlooked in earlier searches.
The delusions reported by friends and family members had been reported to Maine police going back to May, when family members told a Sagadahoc County sheriff’s deputy that Card had accumulated up to 15 guns and would often say that people around him in public were talking about him even though they were paying no attention to him.
Card’s behavior escalated in the summer when he was on an Army reserve detail in West Point, New York. On July 15, he accused three fellow soldiers of calling him a pedophile, saying he would “take care of it.” He was taken to a hospital the next day for an evaluation and spent two weeks at a New York mental health treatment facility not affiliated with the military.
The Army Reserves disclosed that to the local sheriff’s office in September, leading deputies to attempt to locate Card after he allegedly threatened to shoot up a base in Saco. But police never found him and formally closed out their report one week before the shooting.
Experts have said Card’s behavior should have triggered Maine’s “yellow flag” law, which allows police to take guns away from people if a medical professional and judge agree they are a threat to themselves or others. The Army Reserves said Tuesday it barred Card from using weapons on duty in August. He never showed up for drills in September and October.
BDN writer Billy Kobin contributed to this report.