LEWISTON, Maine — The commission investigating the Lewiston mass shooting released its final report Tuesday on Maine’s deadliest-ever rampage in which an Army reservist killed 18 people and injured 13 others at a bowling alley and bar.
The 215-page report was made public before an 11 a.m. news conference at City Hall led by Dan Wathen, the retired chief justice of Maine’s high court, who led the commission that was appointed in November by Gov. Janet Mills and Attorney General Aaron Frey.
While the final report closes a key chapter in the Lewiston shooting response, the case is hardly closed. Lawyers for survivors and family members of victims said Tuesday they expect to file litigation in the coming months to answer lingering questions around the shooting perpetrated by 40-year-old Army reservist Robert Card II of Bowdoin.
The Maine commission met 16 times publicly and numerous times privately between November and July, hearing from local and state police, families of victims, survivors, Army officials, Card’s family members and others. Early findings from state and federal investigations fell hardest on police in Maine and New York as well as members of the Army Reserve.
The commission released a preliminary report in March that found police had probable cause to initiate Maine’s yellow flag law to potentially take Card’s guns away from him a month before the shooting, but Sagadahoc County sheriff’s deputies conducting welfare checks at Card’s home left after he did not answer the door.
In July, the Army Reserve and the Army’s inspector general released the results of separate investigations into the shooting and Card. The military review mentioned three unidentified Army Reserve officers were disciplined for what the Army Reserve chief called a “series of failures.”
The Army Reserve investigation also identified errors by local law enforcement and medical professionals in New York, where Card was hospitalized last July after fellow reservists became concerned about his erratic behavior and repeated claims of people calling him a pedophile.
BDN writer Christopher Burns contributed to this report.
