Police and army would have failed to prevent the worst killing in the United States in 2023

Photo: Joe Raedle Getty Images via Agence France-Presse Law enforcement officers stand outside Schemengees Bar, where one of two mass shootings took place on October 29, 2023, in Lewiston.

Agence France-Presse

Published at 4:05 p.m.

• United States

Police and Army Reserves in the US state of Maine are responsible for failing to prevent the country's worst mass shooting of 2023 that left 18 people dead, an independent commission charged on Tuesday.

Armed with a semi-automatic rifle, Robert Card opened fire on October 25 in a bowling alley in Lewiston, then about ten minutes later in a bar-restaurant in this city of 36,000 inhabitants in the northeastern United States, killing 18 people and injuring 13.

“The commission unanimously concluded that on many occasions the course of the tragic events could have been changed” last October, declared to the press the former president of the Supreme Court of Maine, Daniel Wathen, at the head of an independent body of seven people who investigated for months and released a report revealed Tuesday by the Boston Globe.

The killer, who later committed suicide, suffered from severe mental illness to the point that one of his colleagues feared he would “lose his cool” and commit a “mass killing,” according to initial accounts revealed in late October by the major newspaper in Boston, the historic city in this region of New England.

Robert Card had become paranoid, “heard voices,” and had stored up to 10 or 15 rifles at his brother’s house, his former wife had told law enforcement.

The Wathen Commission report accuses the local sheriff’s office of not placing him in preventive detention or confiscating his firearms.

As for the Army Reserve he was a member of, issued, she “failed in her duty to take appropriate measures to reduce the threat he posed.” In particular because of his “hallucinations, increasingly aggressive behavior, gun collection, and unequivocal comments about his intentions.”

In all, seven people died in the bowling alley, eight in the bar-restaurant, and three others died in hospital. Those killed ranged in age from 14 to 76, including a father and son and an elderly couple.

Police recovered three guns, two near Card's body and one in his car nearby. All had been purchased legally because he had never been hospitalized for mental illness.