AUGUSTA, Maine — Robert Card II and several Army Reserve members had arrived for periodic training in West Point, New York, and were settling in at their hotel’s pool.
It was July 15, about three months before Card, a 40-year-old reservist from Bowdoin, would walk inside a Lewiston bowling alley and bar to commit Maine’s worst shooting on record.
After inviting Card to the pool, the reservists collectively noticed his strange behavior and comments, reservist Matthew Noyes testified Thursday to the commission investigating the Oct. 25 shooting that left 18 dead and 13 injured.
Card claimed a woman at the hotel’s front desk was talking badly about him, and he claimed similar things about an employee at a Dunkin’ he had stopped at in Connecticut, per Noyes. Card’s peers took him the next day to a military hospital before he was transferred to a New York mental health facility.
Fast forward to September, and a fellow reservist reached out to superiors after Card punched him and threatened to “shoot up” a Saco reserve base. That reservist, Sean Hodgson, texted First Sgt. Kelvin Mote about Card’s concerning behavior.
While facing hours of questioning with an attorney at his side Thursday, Mote said he felt there was probable cause to take Card into protective custody to potentially initiate Maine’s “yellow flag” law to take away Card’s weapons. (Card legally purchased the semi-automatic rifle he used in the Lewiston shooting and other guns before his New York hospitalization.)
But Mote felt Sagadahoc County sheriff’s deputies had to initiate the “yellow flag” process after first conducting a welfare check at Card’s residence. When deputies conducted the mid-September welfare check at Card’s Bowdoin home, they left after hearing Card move around inside but receiving no answer at the door.
The next month, Card carried out his rampage at Just-In-Time Recreation and Schemengees Bar and Grille. He was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Lisbon two days later.
Thursday’s meeting featuring Noyes, an Androscoggin County sheriff’s deputy; Mote, an Ellsworth police officer; Jeremy Reamer, Card’s commander; and other reservists revealed some new details but amplified plenty of previously-reported issues, such as Noyes calling communication between agencies during the 48-hour manhunt “unacceptable.”
The long-awaited testimony came after a third-party report released in December found leaders downplayed warnings about Card. But Ben Gideon, one of the attorneys representing 90 families affected by the shooting, was left frustrated Thursday at why police and military officials issued a statewide alert but did not more forcefully try to find or arrest Card in September after he threatened to “shoot up” the Saco base.
At the start of Thursday’s roughly eight-hour meeting, commission chair Daniel Wathen also noted Army witnesses had provided them with “voluminous” documents not until late Wednesday night. Commissioners ended the session a few minutes before 5 p.m. Thursday and told the reservists they may reach back out if needing more information.
A ‘thousand-yard stare’
During the July training trip to New York, after the reservists left the hotel and base for food, Card got confrontational with a peer at a gas station, Noyes said. Mote added Card complained of hearing voices and people calling him a pedophile.
The group knew something was off and made calls that resulted in Mote and military police attempting to reach Card in his locked hotel room. New York State Police arrived the next morning on July 16, and Card told troopers, “I’m gonna friggin’ do something.”
Mote told police he worried Card, who had been promoted and praised for his leadership over the years, would “harm himself or someone else.” He added Thursday the hairs rose on the back of his neck when Card looked at him with a “thousand-yard stare.”
But the troopers said unless Card made a specific threat, they could not forcefully take him to be evaluated under New York’s “red flag” law.
A long drive with silence and crying
Reamer, who is also a Nashua, New Hampshire, police officer, issued a direct order requiring Card to receive a mental health evaluation. Noyes and several reservists got Card in a rental vehicle to go to Keller Army Community Hospital, with New York troopers following.
Card was silent for almost the entire one-hour drive “except for breaking down in tears at one point,” Noyes said Thursday.
Card was eventually transferred to Four Winds Hospital, a civilian facility in Katonah, New York, where he received mental health treatment for about two weeks before returning Aug. 3 to Maine. The Army then ruled Card should not have a military weapon or ammunition.
Noyes wasn’t sure if Card agreed to go voluntarily to Four Winds, and he didn’t know how Card made it there. After leaving Keller to go back to the base, Noyes would not see Card again. On Oct. 25, Noyes left his home to respond to the Lewiston shooting.
Commissioner Toby Dilworth, a former federal prosecutor, asked Reamer multiple questions about a form related to Card’s hospitalization that noted his “impulsivity” as “abnormal” but a “low” risk for harm to himself and others, with “unspecified psychosis.”
The hospital document recommended Card not have weapons in his home. Reamer reiterated Hodgson had told him of a plan for Card’s family to remove guns from his residence.
What was known before Thursday
On Wednesday, Card’s family released analysis from experts who examined his brain and found “significant evidence of trauma.” Card, an instructor in the 3-304th’s Bravo unit, taught cadets at West Point, including on how to throw and use grenades. A commission spokesperson said the panel has met privately with Card’s family and that they are “fully cooperating.”
Card’s family and peers told police about his increasing paranoia, threats and access to firearms in the months before the shooting. In the early morning hours of Sept. 15, Hogdson sent the text message to Mote suggesting Card “is going to snap and do a mass shooting.”
Though Mote passed along Hodgson’s concerns to others, Mote also told a sheriff’s deputy he felt Hodgson was being “an alarmist.” Those details were known before Thursday, including how Hodgson said Card had punched him, claimed people were calling him a pedophile and mentioned shooting up the military center in Saco.
Another reservist, Lt. Ed Yurek of the Brunswick Police Department, warned Saco police Card may show up to the reserve facility the following morning. Reamer, Card’s commander, requested a welfare check and told Saco police that Hodgson “is not the most credible of our soldiers,” per a third-party report.
That report said Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Aaron Skolfield, in a phone conversation with Reamer, questioned whether deeming Card a danger to initiate Maine’s “yellow flag” law could “throw a stick of dynamite into a pool of gas.” Reamer said he believed Card’s family was supposed to remove his guns and that it “supposedly” happened, but he didn’t verify that because he lives in New Hampshire.
The Army Reserve conducted two internal reviews tied to the Lewiston shooting, and the Army’s inspector general is leading an independent investigation.
Thursday was the seventh public meeting for the panel Gov. Janet Mills and Attorney General Aaron Frey formed to investigate the country’s deadliest mass shooting in 2023. Commissioners plan to release an interim report in the coming weeks and a final report this summer.
Mills and Democratic lawmakers introduced several gun control and mental health bills in response to the mass shooting, with the governor seeking to tweak the “yellow flag” law to help police more easily take people into protective custody. State police said “yellow flag” use spiked around Maine after the Lewiston shooting.
The commission heard Monday from shooting survivors who expressed frustration over how police and military officials handled Card’s warning signs. Prior meetings featured Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office personnel, family members of victims and local and state police who were part of the shooting response.
Correction: An earlier version of this report misstated the county in which Army reservist Matthew Noyes is a sheriff’s deputy.