December 6, 2023

Native Information

Issues over Robert Card’s psychological well being throughout navy coaching led to a 14-day hospitalization on the 4 Winds Psychiatric Hospital in Katonah, New York, final summer season.

Individuals signal “I like you,” whereas gathered at a vigil for the victims of mass shootings days earlier, Sunday, Oct. 29, 2023, outdoors the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Lewiston, Maine. AP Photograph/Matt Rourke, File

LEWISTON, Maine (AP) — Two senators from Maine requested the U.S. Military inspector normal on Monday to offer a full accounting of interactions with a reservist earlier than he killed 18 folks and injured 13 others within the deadliest capturing within the state’s historical past.

U.S. Sens. Susan Collins, a Republican, and Angus King, an impartial, informed Lt. Gen. Donna W. Martin in a letter that it’s essential to grasp “what occurred, or did not happen” on the federal degree, together with the Military, earlier than Robert Card opened hearth at a bowling alley and bar in Lewiston.

Fellow troopers expressed issues about Card’s psychological well being earlier than the Oct. 25 shootings. Certainly one of them despatched a textual content message in September saying, “I imagine he’s going to snap and do a mass capturing,” in line with regulation enforcement.

The senators view their federal request as working in tandem with an impartial fee that Democratic Gov. Janet Mills is convening to discover the details associated to the capturing, together with the police response.

“As we proceed to grieve the useless lack of life that day, we should work to totally perceive what occurred — and what may have been carried out otherwise which may have prevented this tragedy — on the native, state, and federal ranges,” the senators wrote.

The senators posed a number of questions together with beneath what circumstances the Military reviews personnel to the Nationwide Instantaneous Prison Background Verify System, and when the Military seeks to invoke state legal guidelines to quickly take away firearms from a soldier’s possession.

Issues over Card’s psychological well being throughout navy coaching led to a 14-day hospitalization on the 4 Winds Psychiatric Hospital in Katonah, New York, final summer season. The concerns continued after Card returned residence to Maine.

A deputy visited Card’s Bowdoin residence twice, as soon as with a further deputy for backup, to carry out a wellness examine in September however Card by no means got here to the door, officers stated. What occurred after that is unclear. The sheriff’s workplace canceled its statewide alert looking for assist finding Card every week earlier than the killings.