AUGUSTA, Maine — The commission reviewing the lead-up and response to Maine’s worst mass shooting on record requested subpoena power from the Legislature during its first meeting Monday, nearly a month after the carnage in Lewiston that left 18 dead and 13 wounded.
Monday’s meeting at the Cross State Office Building in Augusta was mostly focused on laying the groundwork for the organization of the seven-member panel and what it will do to determine facts surrounding the Oct. 25 mass shooting at a Lewiston bar and bowling alley. The group met at 9 a.m. behind closed doors in executive session to discuss staffing before opening a public meeting at 10 a.m.
Former Maine Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Daniel Wathen, who is chairing the commission, said his goal is to produce a final report detailing the commission’s findings within six months and that the panel will aim to operate with “maximum transparency.”
“It is a daunting task,” Wathen said. “But it is a task that each of us owe to the people of Maine and particularly to those victims and those affected directly by this horrific and unprecedented tragedy in Lewiston.”
The commission requested the governor and attorney general ask the Legislature to grant it subpoena power through emergency legislation when lawmakers return in January. That will allow the panel to compel testimony during its inquiry as well as get access to military, medical and other records, commissioner Toby Dilworth, a former assistant U.S. attorney, said.
“We hope and expect that people will cooperate with us and come in and make their documents and evidence available to us, but some may resist,” Dilworth said, adding others may have privacy-related constraints in the absence of a subpoena.
Gov. Janet Mills and Attorney General Aaron Frey, both Democrats, said in a statement after Monday’s meeting they support the request and will immediately begin preparing legislation to grant the panel subpoena power.
The panel’s first steps will include reviewing existing documents and reports on the shooting and then identify areas of further investigation that could involve conducting or collecting interviews, written statements and testimony, Wathen said.
The seven-member commission also unanimously approved Monday the addition of four staff members. Anne Jordan, an attorney and former public safety commissioner under former Gov. John Baldacci, will serve as the executive director.
Other staff include Brian MacMaster, a former chief of investigations in the Maine attorney general’s office; Jim Osterrieder, a former FBI agent and private investigator; and Kevin Kelley, a former spokesperson for U.S. Sen. Susan Collins who will handle communications for the commission. Wathen said the panel may add other staff at a later date.
Earlier this month, Gov. Janet Mills and Attorney General Aaron Frey appointed the commission members and directed them to uncover the “full and unvarnished facts” of the shooting, the months preceding it and the police response that included a 48-hour manhunt for the gunman, Robert R. Card II, before he was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Besides Wathen and Dilworth, the other commission members are Debra Baeder, Maine’s former chief forensic psychologist; Paula Silsby, a former U.S. attorney; Geoffrey Rushlau, a former Maine judge and district attorney; Ellen Gorman, a former high court justice; and Dr. Anthony Ng, medical director of community services for Northern Light Acadia Hospital.
A prominent part of the commission’s work will revolve around how family and peers shared concerns about the mental health and erratic behavior of Card, a 40-year-old Army reservist from Bowdoin, on several occasions with police in the months before the shooting.
The Army Reserve also has launched two internal investigations into what happened before the mass shooting, with questions also swirling over whether New York’s red flag law or Maine’s yellow flag law should have been triggered to help police take away Card’s weapons. Card was training in West Point, New York, with his Army Reserve unit on July 15 when he began acting erratically and accusing others of calling him a pedophile.
He willingly stayed at a New York psychiatric hospital for two weeks before returning to Maine. A fellow reservist requested the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office conduct a welfare check on Card, but Card did not come to the door of his home when police knocked in September.
The panel also will review how police from multiple local, state and federal agencies twice searched the Lisbon recycling center where Card previously worked but overlooked the lot where his body was eventually found in the evening of Oct. 27, which ended the two-day manhunt that put Mainers on edge and featured shelter-in-place orders for the Lewiston area.
Mills and Frey asked the commission to prepare a formal report on the results of the investigation that will be released to the public and encouraged it to conduct its work in public to the greatest extent possible without hindering the probe.
The commission’s next meeting is tentatively scheduled for Dec. 14. The location hasn’t yet been determined.