LEWISTON – A sheriff in Maine said he sent an alert to all law enforcement agencies in the state last month after learning that an Army reservist made threats against his base, a notification that came weeks before the man fatally shot 18 people in America’s deadliest mass shooting this year.
Sheriff Joel Merry of Sagadahoc County said he sent the alert in September in an effort to find the reservist, Robert R. Card II, 40, who was said to have made threats regarding the Army Reserve centre in Saco, Maine.
He added that he sent a deputy to Card’s home but the latter was not there, prompting the notice to be sent.
The revelation is the strongest sign yet that law enforcement folk were aware that Card was a potential danger before he carried out a rampage at a bowling alley and bar in Lewiston on the night of Oct 25.
“The guys, from what I know, paid due diligence to this and did attempt to locate Card and they couldn’t,” Mr Merry said in an interview on Saturday night.
The Maine Department of Public Safety, which led a two-day search for Card before he was found dead in a trailer at a recycling plant on Friday night, did not respond to requests for comment. The Associated Press first reported on the sheriff’s alert.
Merry declined to comment in detail about the reported threats, and it was unclear whether any departments that received the alert tried to locate Card. It was not immediately clear how often such alerts are issued. Two law enforcement leaders in Maine said on Saturday that they get many and did not recall receiving one about Card.
He enlisted in the US Army Reserve in 2002 and was trained as a petroleum supply specialist, whose work involved shipping and storing fuel. He did not serve on any combat deployments.
Earlier on Saturday, the commissioner of the state’s public safety department said Card had been paranoid and could have been hearing voices.
Commissioner Michael Sauschuck suggested that Card had most likely been to the bowling alley and bar before, and may have carried out the attack in part because he believed that “people were talking about him”.
“There’s paranoia, there’s some conspiracy theorist piece,” he said.
During a recent visit to a National Guard training facility outside Peekskill, New York, Card had a run-in with officials and was later evaluated at a mental health facility, according to a senior law enforcement official.
Mr Sauschuck said he had no information to suggest that Card had ever been forcibly committed for mental health treatment.
Card had legally purchased several guns, including some days before the attack, according to Mr Jim Ferguson, the special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ field division in Boston.
Following the shooting, he fled towards the Androscoggin River, police said, abandoning his car about a 15-minute drive from the bar that he attacked. A manhunt followed, with the state issuing a shelter-in-place order affecting thousands of residents.
During that time, police twice searched a recycling plant where Card previously worked, near where he abandoned his car.
But they did not realise that a dirt lot across the street that held dozens of trailers was part of the property.
Police said when they searched the trailers, they found him inside one, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
In addition to the 18 people killed, 13 were wounded. Three remain in critical condition. NYTIMES
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