Army and Police Missed Chances to Prevent Maine’s Deadliest Shooting

A final report related to the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, shows how local police and Army Reserves failed to prevent the deadliest mass shooting in the state’s history.
On Tuesday, an independent commission released its final report on the deadliest mass shooting in Maine history when 40-year-old Robert Card fatally shot 18 people at a bowling alley in 2023.
The independent commission, which was created by Maine Democratic Governor Janet Mills, held dozens of meetings, heard testimony from numerous witnesses and reviewed many pieces of evidence. The commission pointed to police failures in seizing the gunman’s weapons and criticized the Army Reserves for not providing adequate mental health care for Card.
The 215-page report reaffirmed the panel’s March conclusion that law enforcement had the authority, under the state’s yellow flag law, to confiscate the shooter’s firearms and place him in protective custody weeks before the attack. It also criticized the Army Reserves, stating they should have taken greater responsibility for ensuring proper care and addressing the issue of his weapons.
Kathleen Walker—the wife of Jason Walker, who was killed in the shooting—testified during the commission’s hearings and said that “the system failed, and we can’t allow this to happen again.”
A month after the shooting, which occurred in October 2023, the independent commission began its work and investigation into Card, an Army reservist. During the commission’s public hearings, they noted that there was a rapid response from police after the shooting while also revealing chaos in the hunt for Card, before he took his own life.
The commission’s hearings detailed how some family members and other Army reservists believed that Card exhibited paranoid behavior several months prior to the shooting. In July 2023, Card was hospitalized during Army training, and the report revealed that his commanding officer failed to check on Card’s care following the injury.
The report also revealed that in September, a fellow Army reservist sent a text to his commanding officer about Card saying, “I believe he’s going to snap and do a mass shooting.”
In their own report following the mass shooting, former Chief of the Army Reserves Lieutenant General Jody Daniels found that there was “a series of failures by unit leadership.” The report also said that three Army reservists received a dereliction of duty discipline after the incident.
After the shooting, Maine passed new gun legislation that created a three-day waiting period for firearms.
The Lewiston commission, chaired by former Maine Supreme Court Chief Justice Daniel Wathen, includes seven members: Two former federal prosecutors, two additional former judges, the state’s former chief forensic psychologist and a private psychiatrist who serves as an executive at a psychiatric hospital.