The U.S. Army Reserve, which issued the clearest warning ahead of Maine’s deadliest mass shooting, is scheduled to answer questions Thursday from the committee investigating the tragedy.
Six weeks before Robert Card murdered 18 people at a Lewiston bar and bowling alley, his best friend and fellow reservist Sean Hodgson texted his boss and asked for the passcode to the gate at an Army Reserve training facility. changed and told them to arm themselves if the cards indicated. Up.
“I believe he is going to open fire and cause a mass shooting,” Hodgson wrote on Sept. 15.
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The message came months after relatives alerted police that Card had become paranoid and worried about his access to guns. Authorities’ failure to remove the gun from Card’s possession in the weeks before the shooting has been the subject of a months-long investigation in the state, which has also enacted new gun safety laws since the tragedy. It was approved.
Mr. Card also spent two weeks in a psychiatric hospital in July, and the military banned him from possessing weapons while on duty. But authorities refused to confront Mr. Card, except to temporarily stake out a backup center and visit Mr. Card at his home. He was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound two days after the shooting.
In an interim report released last month, an independent commission launched by Gov. Jane Mills found that the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office should detain Card and seize his gun under Maine’s “yellow flag” law. It was concluded that there were valid reasons. He also criticized the police for failing to follow up on Mr Hodgson’s warning.
On October 27, 2023, in Lewiston, Maine, the road to Skimenzie’s Bar & Grill is closed after a shooting by Army reservist Robert Card. In Lewiston, Maine, Sean Hodgson, also in the U.S. Army Reserve, issued the clearest warning. It is the deadliest mass shooting, and he is scheduled to answer questions from the commission investigating the tragedy on April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
The commission is scheduled to hear from the state’s Director of Victim Witness Services on Thursday. Hodgson told The Associated Press he is scheduled to be questioned Thursday morning.
In a series of exclusive interviews in January, Mr. Hodgson told The Associated Press that he met Mr. Card in the Army Reserve in 2006 and became close friends after they both divorced their spouses around the same time. They lived together for about a month in 2022, and when Card was hospitalized in New York in July, Hodgson drove him back to Maine.
Mr Hodgson became increasingly worried about his friend’s mental health after an incident in which Mr Card “flipped” and hit the steering wheel after a night of gambling and nearly collided with him multiple times, and authorities warned. After he ignored his pleas to pull over, Card punched him in the face, Mr Hodgson said.
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“It took me so long to report my loved one,” he said. “But when the hairs on the back of your neck start standing up, you have to listen.”
Some officials downplayed Mr Hodgson’s warnings and suggested he was drunk because of the slow time the email was sent. Army Reserve Col. Jeremy Riemer called him “the least trusted of our nation’s soldiers” and said his message should be taken “with a grain of salt.”
Mr Hodgson, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism, said he had not been drinking that night and had been awake waiting for a call from his boss as he worked a night shift.
