AUGUSTA, Maine — The Army Reserve commander who oversaw Robert Card II before he carried out Maine’s deadliest mass shooting confirmed Thursday he did not follow up on a hospital’s requests to ensure Card attended counseling and lost access to his weapons.
Starting last July, Jeremy Reamer received several emails from a case reviewer after Card received about two weeks of mental health treatment in New York, with a counseling form telling Card to attend follow-up appointments and report to his commander each month.
Mental health providers also recommended that Reamer take measures to “safely remove all firearms and weapons” from Card’s residence in Bowdoin, as the state commission investigating the Lewiston mass shooting noted in a preliminary report.
But Reamer, a New Hampshire police officer, told the commission Thursday that due to his email being “down at the time,” he did not see the counseling form until after the Oct. 25 shooting at a Lewiston bowling alley and bar that left 18 dead and 13 injured.
Reamer otherwise affirmed that Card’s family and a fellow Army reservist in his Saco-based unit, Sean Hodgson, had reached an agreement that summer to have family members remove weapons from the Bowdoin home. He added that he has never learned if Card’s guns were ever removed from the home.
“I was relying on a friend who was deeply concerned for Card to help facilitate this,” Reamer said Thursday while under questioning from former federal prosecutor Toby Dilworth, a member of the commission.
Card, 40, purchased several guns legally before going to New York in July for training with his unit and getting hospitalized after he began acting erratically, assaulted a peer and accused strangers of calling him a pedophile.
Hodgson reached back out to Reamer in September to warn that Card was “going to snap and do a mass shooting.” Reamer and other Army Reserve superiors described Hodgson as an alarmist but asked Sagadahoc County sheriff’s deputies to conduct welfare checks at Card’s residence. The deputies left when Card did not answer the door.
“I think families can police their own,” Reamer said Thursday, adding he did not know which of Card’s family members was responsible for removing the shooter’s guns and that Hodgson could not do so because he faced charges in unrelated criminal cases.
A little over a month later, Card carried out the shooting spree at Just-In-Time Recreation and Schemengees Bar and Grille before police found him dead two days later of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Gov. Janet Mills and Attorney General Aaron Frey formed the seven-member commission in the wake of the Oct. 25 mass shooting. Since its first meeting in November, the panel has heard from Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office personnel, family members of victims, local and state police and shooting survivors.
It also questioned Card’s military superiors, including Reamer, in March before releasing the preliminary report that found the sheriff’s office had sufficient probable cause to take Card into protective custody following his threats and erratic behavior and initiate the yellow flag process to restrict his access to weapons in September, a month before he carried out the rampage.
That report also faulted Reamer, who said Thursday he is now in an operations role with the Army Reserve unit after his commander term ended, for his handling of recommendations from New York psychiatric hospital staff on safely removing guns from Card’s Bowdoin residence.
Reamer, during more than three hours of questioning Thursday, reiterated he and the Army Reserve had “no jurisdiction” over Card’s personal guns.
Mills has proposed tweaking the yellow flag law she helped craft to make it easier for police to take people into protective custody, but House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, and other Democrats introduced a late “red flag” bill that would let family members petition judges to take away weapons from a loved one deemed dangerous, instead of first needing police and a mental health provider to evaluate the person before going to a court.
The commission also heard later Thursday from several survivors, American Sign Language interpreters and Maine’s recently retired chief medical examiner, Dr. Mark Flomenbaum.
‘It was too late’
Jamie Jordan took her three kids to Just-In-Time Recreation that Wednesday night in October for a youth bowling practice. Her oldest child, 16-year-old Gwen, loved to tease coach Bob Violette by taking his fries when he was not looking.
Violette noticed Gwen’s antics, gave her younger brother a fry and told him to brag to Gwen. That was shortly before Card walked inside the bowling alley and opened fire, Gwen said Thursday through a statement read by a victim advocate.
The mother, her children and other youth bowlers hid behind monitors and ball returns by lanes 11 and 12, and they stood up after Card left the building. Jordan said she tried and failed to block the kids from seeing the “horrific scenes,” but she failed as they saw Violette’s body.
“After I called 911, I remember looking around and realizing there was nothing I could do,” Jordan said Thursday. “It was too late.”
Flomenbaum said Thursday it was difficult to ascertain the gunman’s time of death. But Flomenbaum, who testified via Zoom, stood by his earlier assessment that Card died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound that likely happened 12 to 18 hours before his body was found.
Flomenbaum’s conclusions suggested that Card was alive and possibly on the run during much of the two-day search, the biggest in state history. Card’s body was found in the back of a tractor-trailer on a former employer’s property.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
