Victims' families and survivors of the worst mass shooting in Maine history are taking the first step to pursue civil lawsuits over the 18 deaths, physical injuries and trauma that occurred at a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston on Oct. 25, 2023.
"There is pain, trauma and regrets that will never go away," said Cynthia Young in a written statement. Her husband, William and 14-year-old son, Aaron were killed at the bowling alley. "As terrible as the shooting was it's even more tragic to think that there were many opportunities to prevent this and they were not taken."
Young is one of 100 individual family members and survivors who are notifying the U.S. government of their intent to pursue claims against the Department of Defense, the Army and Keller Army Community Hospital in West Point, N.Y. for negligence in failing to respond to warning signs posed by Army Reserve Sgt. Robert Card and to his explicit threat to commit a mass shooting.
The notices are required by the Federal Tort Claims Act, which permits civil actions against the United States for negligence. By law, the U.S. has six months to investigate and evaluate the claims. If they are denied or if no action is taken, the claimants may file lawsuits in federal court.
Over the past year, an independent state commission and the Army have investigated what led up to the shootings and where balls were dropped and mistakes made by the Army Reserve and local law enforcement.
“The U.S. should have sufficient information through the Army’s own internal investigation to evaluate our claims promptly," said attorney Ben Gideon. "However, if the U.S. chooses to run out the clock by sitting on our claims without acting, we will file our action six months and one day from today."
According to an excerpt of their notice of claim, the Army and its personnel were aware, for at least seven months, that Card’s mental health had "precipitously and unexplainably declined, leaving him paranoid, delusional, with violent ideations and limited impulse control." He'd been having auditory hallucinations and believed people were calling him a pedophile and making disparaging remarks about him behind his back.
Yet, leaders of his Army Reserve unit did not take action until he became combative with a fellow reservist during a New York battle assembly in July. That's when they became so concerned about his erratic behavior that they issued an order for an emergency, command-directed behavioral health evaluation.
During an assessment at Keller Army Community Hospital, or KACH, and later when he was transferred to a private psychiatric facility known as Four Winds, Card was determined to pose a serious risk to himself and others.
“I am afraid of what I may do if people still keep bothering me about the so-called voices that I am hearing being homosexual and a pedophile," Card is reported to have said in Keller's emergency department.
At Four Winds, Card also reported that he had a "hit list" of people who he believed had wronged him. These included people at the bowling alley and the bar where he had played cornhole and that he later attacked.
Card was hospitalized for 19 days. But according to the notice of claim, he was allowed to return to the community "without determining a cause of his mental illness or developing a plan for treatment."
In addition, the notice states that the Army, KACH and the Department of Defense knew Card had been exposed to thousands of blast events from his work as a firearms and grenade instructor in the Army Reserve over two decades but they never informed Four Winds of his history. Nor did they investigate whether physiological damage to his brain from the blasts was the root cause of his acute mental illness. They also failed to determine whether the symptoms were exacerbated in the "line of duty," which is something required by the Army.
Before his release form the hospital, Card's treatment providers had expressed concerns about his access to firearms. And they wanted assurances from his command that they would be removed. He owned at least ten guns.
According to a timeline prepared by the Army, as of July 25, while he was hospitalized in New York, "Sergeant Card agreed to have his weapons removed." That means there was nothing to prevent the Army from removing them at that time. Instead, no action was taken.
Card was left in possession of numerous weapons, including the AR-10 assault rifle that he used to carry out the mass shooting.
Had Card not consented to having his weapons removed, the notice points out that New York's Extreme Risk Protection Order is another mechanism to ensure that patients with mental illness are separated from their firearms. But the process was not pursued. And the Army never notified local law enforcement in Sagadahoc County, where Card lived, that his guns should be removed.
Following his discharge, Card did not participate in mental health treatment. His providers from KACH left repeated voice messages for him but none of the calls were returned. He did speak with one nurse in August and told her that he was "fine" but he was "not taking his medication and would not go for follow up treatment."
The KACH chart states that Card's case was closed due to noncompliance with communication. But that was never reported to Card's unit command.
On Sept. 13, 2023, Card's best friend and fellow reservist Sean Hodgson contacted Sgt. Kelvin Mote at 2:30 a.m. to say that on their way home from a casino, Card started complaining that people were calling him a pedophile.
According to the Army investigation, “SFC Card told [Hodgson] that ‘he could take out 100 people with this expensive scope’ he had just bought followed by a list of places that he could ‘shoot up.’” Hodgson also reported that Card had threatened to “shoot up” the drill center in Saco and other places.
When Hodgson told Card to knock it off, that he was going to get in trouble for talking about shooting places and people, Card punched him.
Two days later, Hodgson sent Mote a text message asking for help with Card and warning that the unit and other places could be in danger.
"Please," he wrote. "I believe he is going to snap and do a mass shooting."
Mote spoke with Capt. Jeremy Reamer, who asked him to request a "check well being" on Card. Despite what Mote described as a "critical threat," Card's Army command failed to report it as a "serious incident report," something the Army investigation concluded should have been filed.
According to the notice, Card's threat to shoot up the unit and commit a mass shooting also required that he be sent for an emergency behavioral health evaluation. Reamer later testified that he did not seek to have Card evaluated because he trusted that local law enforcement, "based on the information they got, that they would take it and run with whatever policy and however they wanted to handle it.”
Mote never contacted the Sagadahoc County Sheriff's Office himself. Instead, he had a detective in the Ellsworth Police Department reach out to Sgt. Aaron Skolfield to request the well being check on Card. The detective provided Skolfield with a summary of Card's history. He also forwarded by email a letter Mote wrote about Card's recent behavior and hospitalization. Hodgson's text message was also attached.
Mote later testified that he intended the letter to serve as a probable cause statement to be used by the sheriff's office to take Card into protective custody and to have his weapons removed under Maine's yellow flag law. But, according to the notice of claim, Mote never told anyone that he was requesting that the Sagadahoc County Sheriff's Office take that step.
On Friday, Sept. 15, Capt. Reamer had a telephone conversation with Card, who said he would not be attending battle assembly at the Saco base that weekend. According to Reamer, Card was angry about his hospitalization. But Reamer did not ask him about the threats reported by Hodgson to shoot up the unit and other places. Nor did he ask him whether he was taking his medication and going to appointments or whether he had access to his firearms.
The following morning, two Saco police officers, alerted by Army personnel that Card might show up to carry out his threats, arrived at the base and spoke to Reamer. Reamer told them that Hodgson's text message had been sent at "two something in the morning" and suggested Hodgson might have been drinking. He also described Hodgson as "not the most credible of … our soldiers."
That same morning, Sgt. Skolfield of the Sagadahoc County Sheriff's Office went to Card's trailer in Bowdoin to attempt to locate him. Skolfield spoke to both Mote and Reamer, who he says both cast doubt on the reliability of Hodgson's text. Reamer also suggested that Card's weapons may have been removed. He said he'd been told that the weapons had been moved to a family member's place, although he was unable to verify the information.
Reamer also advised Skolfield that all he wanted him to do at Card's home was "document" that he was "there and alive."
Skolfield later testified that the communication and information he received from the Army discouraged him from trying to take Card into custody or exercising Maine's yellow flag law. He questioned why it took the Army more than two days to report the assault on Hodgson and more than 12 hours to report the alarming text message about Card.
He also questioned why, if Mote was so concerned, he didn't contact the sheriff's office himself. And he said, had he known that doctors in New York wanted Card restricted from his firearms, it would have helped inform his "probable cause analysis."
Although the Sagadahoc County Sheriff's Office never made contact with Card, nobody in Card's unit ever followed up again because, according to Mote, they did not feel the need to tell law enforcement how to do their job.
“In the year since the mass shooting ... many facts have come to light that show that the Army could have — and should have — acted,” said attorney Travis Brennan. “Although we expect to learn more through the civil case, it is now abundantly clear that there were many opportunities to intervene that would have prevented tragic events of October 25.”
