"In the Room with Peter Bergen" transcript: Episode 73

In this episode: The Mass Shooting that Everyone Saw Coming

October 22, 2024

"In the Room with Peter Bergen" transcript: Episode 73

Episode 73: The Mass Shooting that Everyone Saw Coming

One year ago, Maine experienced the worst mass shooting in its history. It turned out many people and institutions had known for months before that the shooter, Robert Card, was in a mental health crisis and heavily armed. One friend even alerted authorities that Card might “snap and commit a mass shooting.” Despite that knowledge — and the state’s “yellow flag” gun law — 18 people were killed. Emotional testimony from an official investigation reveals the failures in a system designed to prevent this kind of violence — and how they might be avoided in the future.

Please note: Our show is produced for the ear and made to be heard. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the audio before quoting in print.

Further note: All sound labeled “Lewiston Commission” is taken from recordings of public meetings of the Independent Commission to Investigate the Facts of the Tragedy in Lewiston. Full recordings, and further information about the Commission, can be found here: https://www.maine.gov/icl/

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ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission: Ready to begin, I believe. We're on? Good. Good morning. I'm glad to have you all here this morning and I want to begin...

You're listening in on a gathering of experts, assembled on a cold March morning in the state of Maine.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission: I chair the Commission and I'll ask …To my left, to my right rather... Good morning.

(fades under)

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission: My name is Dr. Anthony Ng. I'm a psychiatrist up in Bangor. And I'm Debbie Baeder. I'm a retired forensic psychologist.

They were called together to hear firsthand testimony about an all-too-familiar American tragedy: a mass shooting.

The facts of these shootings diverge from case to case: how many people killed, the weapon used, the location. Here, in the small city of Lewiston, the shooting happened at a bar and a bowling alley on October 25, 2023.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Bobbi Nichols: …It started out a really good night. I would bowl, and then I would go watch her bowl. And we'd be like high-fiving.

Until Robert Card, a U.S. Army Reservist, walked in and killed 18 people in a matter of minutes.

Each mass shooting is its own hell on earth.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Michael Roderick: I will never, for the rest of my life, get the vision out of my head of seeing my 18-year-old son scared for his life as a shooter was murdering our friends in front of our eyes.

Through the winter, spring and summer, the commission has gathered to hear this kind of testimony. And it goes far beyond those brutal details of the shooting itself.

Because there is something quite striking about this particular case: Many, many people and institutions knew that Sgt. First Class Robert Card was at risk of committing a mass shooting in the weeks and months before it happened.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Bobbi Nichols: People knew. Cause this went on for months and months and months. They blew it away like it was nothing.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Ben Dyer: People knew this was going to happen. And nobody stopped it.

This case undermines some of our bedrock hopes about how these shootings can be prevented. That if a potential shooter gets plugged into the systems we have that might help them — mental healthcare and law enforcement — a tragedy can be averted.

As it turns out, lots of institutions were aware that Card was in crisis, heavily armed and had thoughts about killing other people. Those institutions included law enforcement in two states, the Army Reserve command, and even a psychiatric hospital where he was a patient during this time period.

Card’s family, friends, and fellow Army reservists reached out with increasing urgency to ask for help. Some even spoke the words “mass shooting” out loud, wrote them down and sent them to others. There were phone calls. There were texts. Police alerts. Home visits.

And yet, not one of those people — or institutions — was successful in preventing the worst imaginable outcome.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Tammy Asselin: He'd been screaming for help, literally telling people what he was gonna do. I'm not sure that only one agency or one department dropped the ball. I think multiple agencies did, multiple times. I think there were balls everywhere. Someone needs to figure out how it was allowed to happen.

Bobby Nichols: All these gun laws, the bottom line is, is you can pass a thousand gun laws, okay? If you don't follow the protocol, why have them?

In essence, that’s the question that the commission was trying to answer: why didn’t all of these protocols and laws prove effective? Is something broken in the system itself?

If the answer is yes, the implications go way beyond Maine. And new questions arise: is that flaw in the system even fixable? Is it possible to build a failsafe system to prevent another Lewiston, another Columbine, another Sandy Hook, when these systems are run by people, people who get scared, or busy or lazy? People who sometimes just do the wrong thing?

In Card’s case, one of America’s biggest employers was involved — the U.S. military. It turns out that the wheels that set Card’s mental health crisis into motion may have started to turn years before he ever made a threatening comment. And that has implications of its own.

So today, through the voices of the people who lived through this mass shooting, what went wrong beforehand? And what can we learn that might stop the next tragedy?

I'm Peter Bergen, this is In the Room.

(Theme music)

Mary Ellen O’Toole: Somebody needed to see the whole book, not just a chapter. And in this case, that did not happen.

That's Mary Ellen O'Toole. I asked her to listen to some of the testimony and review the report released in August by the commission tasked with investigating the Lewiston shooting.

Mary Ellen O’Toole: My involvement in mass shooting cases goes back to about 1996 when I was still with the FBI and working in the behavioral analysis unit.

A few years into her time in this specialized unit, the Columbine high school massacre happened. O’Toole was tasked with combing through the very few mass shooting cases that then existed to try to understand how to prevent them in the future. It’s easy to forget that back then, these shootings were pretty rare.

O’Toole is going to take us through the case to help us better understand some of the key takeaways about why no one stopped this mass shooting from happening, and what could be done differently if and when another case like Card’s arises. We decided to zero in on a few critical moments that the commission focused on in their final report.

(Music)

So, let's start from the beginning.

For the state Commission investigating the mass shooting, the first event on the timeline is in May of 2023. That’s when Robert Card's ex-wife of many years had a distressing conversation with their son. He was really concerned about his dad…

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Cara Lamb: He told me he was worried for his father's mental health, that he was displaying behaviors that he then explained to me that were really making him nervous. Having very nasty, strong vocal opinions about friends, girlfriends. He mentioned a situation where he'd gone to pick up his fishing gear with his buddy at his dad's house, that his dad had just met them in the driveway in an absolute rage.

Despite there being no love lost between Cara Lamb and her ex, she recognized that this behavior was out of character and her son was getting nervous.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Cara Lamb: And felt threatened to an extent by his own father. And that's not a normal behavior. To me, that meant, what do we do? Do we call the cops?

Like many families worried that a loved one who is going through a mental health crisis might turn violent, Lamb and her son weren’t sure where to turn. Card hadn’t yet committed a crime. And might Card blame his son if law enforcement appeared on his doorstep?

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Cara Lamb: The best solution I could come up with was, why don't we go talk to our resource officer at the high school and ask them, what do we do? I'm not sure that we have an appropriate place for those inappropriate questions.

The school did call the local police department. This marks the first of several times that law enforcement would be tapped to do something about Robert Card and his worrying mental state in the months leading up to the shooting.

But when Card’s former wife met with a police officer, she was frustrated by what they told her.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Cara Lamb: What was said to us was, well, there's only so much you can do. Really, you know, our hands are kind of tied. He hasn't directly threatened you. He hasn't physically laid his hands on you. He hasn't pointed a gun at you.

But that interaction did start the ball rolling: The police officer reached out to the Army Reserve Unit which Card had been a part of for nine years, as well as to Card's brother.

And they learned some alarming information: Card had taken between 10 to 15 guns from his brother’s house and he’d brought them to his own home.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission Member: Based upon the information that they gave you, did you believe that Robert Card was mentally ill or suffering from some sort of a mental health crisis.

Deputy Chad Carleton: Yes, I did.

Commission Member: And did you understand that he had access to many firearms?

Deputy Chad Carleton: Yes, I did.

This of course raised a red flag — the very kind of alarming situation that so-called “red flag” laws are meant to address. These laws permit a state to seize firearms from a person who is considered a risk to themselves or to others. 21 states have these laws but Maine is not one of them.

Maine does have a "yellow flag law" — it's the only state in the nation to have this variation. Mary Ellen O’Toole explained to me how it’s supposed to work in a situation like this.

Mary Ellen O’Toole: Families have to go to the police department. Then the police department will need to have probable cause to put the individual in question, which would be Mr. Card, into what's called protective custody. And they will then bring him to a mental health professional who will evaluate him. And then the information from the family, the information from the mental health professional about the level of dangerousness will then go to the judge. That's the yellow flag law.

In states with red flag laws, a family can go straight to a judge to make that request. It’s a much more streamlined process than the one in Maine — where the family has to get the police involved, and the police have to take that person into protective custody before a judge can get involved.

But according to O’Toole, the yellow flag law has some hypothetical advantages: By the time the information comes before a judge, there is ample evidence to make a decision.

Mary Ellen O’Toole: So, they both can result in the same thing, removing guns from the home. The yellow flag laws are more cumbersome. In a genuine crisis situation where the consequences are extreme, the fewer steps that one has to go through, whether it's family or law enforcement, frankly, the better.

In Card’s case — though there are many points along the way where they might have — the police never actually tried to pursue a yellow flag order. You’ll hear more about why later.

After the school called police, the police called Card’s Army Reserve unit. And they assured the sheriff’s office that they would sit down with Card and talk to him at an upcoming training event. In fact, they didn’t follow through.

Card’s sister and brother also came by his house to check on him. Card answered the door with a gun in his hand. They seemed to part on good terms. But his sister Nicole was worried about him. He seemed paranoid and angry. She started to call around to see if she could find some help, including calls to the Veterans’ Administration.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Nicole Herling: Despite exhaustive online searches, I couldn't find clear information on where to report my concerns. The information I did come across was outdated, and despite leaving numerous voicemails, none were returned.

A couple of months after that school meeting, Card went on a training trip to West Point. It was part of his work with the Army Reserve.

As a reservist, Card had been an instructor at a grenade range for years. That exposure to repeated blasts may have taken a heavy toll on his health.

He’d developed severe hearing loss. He’d gotten hearing aids. In recent months, he’d been complaining that he could hear people talking about him, complete strangers saying derogatory things — a worrying sign that he might also be suffering from a serious mental health issue.

On that trip to West Point, Card was in a car, riding with a couple of other reservists to pick up pizzas, when that behavior came to a head.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Daryl Reed: We weren't talking. We were just driving.

Daryl Reed, one of those Army reservists, was surprised when Card suddenly addressed him.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Daryl Reed: And, uh, he said, I can't believe you too Reed, right? He said something along those lines.

Reed was confused. He didn’t know what Card was talking about. But Card was suddenly livid.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Daryl Reed: He like turned like, like 180 degrees. Like his teeth were gritting. And I kept telling him, I was like, I didn't say anything like, dude, like, what did I say? And, um, and he, he couldn't tell me, like, he wouldn't tell me. And he's just like, it's all right. It's all right. I'll take care of it.

They stopped at a gas station and got out to pick up some beer.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Daryl Reed: He came at me, like he charged. He wanted to fight. And I, since I was like towards the front of the truck, I kind of like turned around the front of it, just to try to put some distance between us. Um, but his fists were balled up. Um, he wanted to go to, he wanted to fight and I, I didn't, I didn't want to hit him cause he like, we didn't, nothing even happened, you know, I didn't say anything and I just put some distance in between us and, and I did yell like, like, ‘what's wrong with you?”’ Like, I cussed at him a few times, um, just cause I was just like, “Why are you trying to fight me right now? “

Later, back at the hotel where they were staying, Card retreated to his room. And Reed started to worry. Card was, after all, a grenade instructor.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Daryl Reed: He can't go out on the ranges, like what if he thinks a cadet said something about him, you know what I mean? And we have high explosive grenade rounds and, um, maybe we should get, you know, the, the chain of command involved.

That night, one of the reservists took away Card’s car keys, unsure if he might be drunk. In the morning they called the New York State Police. There's actually a body cam video of Card talking to a state trooper. You can hear Card's voice here, and though it’s a little garbled, he’s telling the trooper that no one used to notice him or look at him until recently:

ARCHIVAL NYS Trooper Bodycam Video / Robert Card: No one looks at me. No one talks. I'm pretty invisible until all of a sudden, now everyone fucking knows who I am.

Police officer: Why do you think that is?

Robert Card: All of these rumors about me being gay, pedophile.

This had become Card's main delusion, that people were talking about him, calling him things like a pedophile behind his back.

In the bodycam footage, the police officer tries to appeal to Card, reminding him that these are his fellow reservists. His friends. He’s known some of them for years.

ARCHIVAL NYS Trooper Bodycam Video / Police officer: I hope you understand that they're concerned enough about your welfare that they called us.

But Card doesn’t see things that way. And then he says something that sounds like a real threat:

ARCHIVAL NYS Trooper Bodycam Video / Robert Card: Oh, cause they're scared, cause I'm gonna friggin do something, cause I am capable.

Police officer: What do you mean by that?

Robert Card: Huh?

Police officer: What do you mean by that?

Robert Card: Nothing, no.

Police officer: …Okay.

1st Sgt. Kelvin Mote, who witnessed this incident, said in testimony that those words haunted him afterwards.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Kelvin Mote: And I remember clear as day him saying, Yeah, because they're afraid I'm gonna do something. And then he said the words ‘I am capable.’ That was enough for me. At that moment, I decided he was going to the hospital one way or the other.

The New York State Police said they hadn’t heard Card make any direct threats, so they didn’t have enough information to take him into custody. So, his Army Reserve unit decided to use something called "command direction" to compel Card to go into psychiatric care. Card was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for more than two weeks.

So it seemed at this point that Card was getting some real help. People with the knowledge and training to recognize a mental health crisis were aware he was unwell, and he was in their care.

In the hospital, Card admitted to having a “hit list.” Clinicians determined that Card was paranoid and at times delusional, and he was thinking about killing people. But after 18 days, Card was deemed fit to go home, as long as he agreed to seek out more treatment and take his meds, which he reportedly said he would. But here’s another flaw in the system, according to Mary Ellen O’Toole:

Mary Ellen O’Toole: It appears as though Card was able to provide what we call self-reported information, we know now, with other cases, that self-reported information, especially in a mental health context, can be very deceptive. There's no way to look into a looking glass and say, is he lying? Does he mean that?

Card said he would take his meds and he agreed to get help — but could the hospital staff really take him at his word? Card told the truth to his close friend and fellow Army reservist Sgt. Sean Hodgson, who testified to the commission:

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission Member: Did he tell you that he was taking the medications they were giving him?

Sean Hodgson: He told me he was pretty much playing the game.

Commission Member: Playing the game?

Sean Hodgson: He's smart, he can pass all their tests. He even told me that he told these people that too. That he was, he was just going to get through the motions. He told them straight out, I'm answering all the questions and I'm telling you what you want to hear, because I don't want to be here.

Despite releasing Card, hospital staff were evidently concerned about what might happen next. That’s why they impressed upon his Army command that someone needed to take away Card’s weapons. But his Army commander seemed to pass off the responsibility. He asked Card’s friend Sean Hodgson to try to get Card’s guns away from him, even though Hodgson himself was not allowed to possess firearms at the time, due to a criminal case of his own.

O’Toole read about the hospital’s instructions that Card’s guns needed to be taken away from him in the Maine commission’s report.

Mary Ellen O’Toole: The one line that stood out to me was, make sure that he does not have access to his weapons. The mental health professionals knew that the access to weapons was an issue. Law enforcement did not follow up with the weapons issue.

(Music)

Meanwhile, Card’s sister, Nicole, was still trying to get him help. But the message she got when she finally spoke to someone at the VA was disturbing.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Nicole Herling: A VA crisis worker advised me to not inform the command about my brother's delusions of being called gay or a pedophile, while I didn't believe these accusations to be true, the thought of him potentially facing harassment or differential treatment due to these accusations was distressing. It left me even more concerned about my brother's safety, with nowhere to turn. I am unsure if the VA crisis helpline is equipped to aid families dealing with crises like ours.

Nicole’s husband, Card's brother-in-law, watched Nicole run into roadblock after roadblock.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / James Herling: It was hard for me, as a husband, to see this tireless work that she put in, in trying to get her brother, Robbie, the help that he needed, and not accomplish anything.

‌Mary Ellen O’Toole: When you read the Commission's findings about the role that the Army took in this case, or the role that they didn't take in this case, it really got caught in the sludge.

And in a sense, the Army’s role in this case actually goes back a lot further. Before Card ever displayed symptoms of paranoia. Because, for years, in his role as a grenade instructor, Card had been exposed to perhaps 10,000 blasts, according to his fellow soldiers.

The relationship between brain injury and mental health is hardly new to the military. Studies have suggested that repeated blast exposure could have played a role in the phenomenon of “shell-shocked” soldiers returning from WWI — and even many cases of PTSD after Vietnam. Since 2000, over half a million members of the U.S. military have suffered some sort of traumatic brain injury. Most of these injuries were mild, but some could have devastating long-term mental health consequences.

So when Card started to display symptoms of paranoia and delusions, it shouldn’t have caught his command entirely off guard. More on this later.

O’Toole says that while many agencies were involved in Card’s case by this point — the local police department, the Army, New York State Police, the VA — that in fact might be part of the problem.

‌Mary Ellen O’Toole: When you have those numbers of people, having that tight communication becomes really important because the logical outcome, that people will not communicate, or people will make assumptions that another agency has this, another agency is going to take this and be the leader. That didn't happen here and in my experience in law enforcement, oftentimes, that doesn't happen.

Everyone seemed to think that someone else had “got this.”

‌Mary Ellen O’Toole: So it really does seem to send a very strong message that moving forward, when there are so many moving parts, and the consequences can be so critical, it really is important for people to communicate about what's happening and how the situation is deteriorating and who has really the authority, who has the best opportunity to get that intervention and get it quickly.

As Card continued to fall through the cracks, things began to get even more dire. Sean Hodgson, Card’s close friend, was trying to provide some support where the system seemed to be failing. But nothing was working and Hodgson was getting increasingly worried.

About a month after Card left the hospital, the two friends were driving home after a night out, when Card, who was driving, started acting erratically. He was angry about what had happened in New York in July — the police, the hospitalization...

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Sean Hodgson: He started flipping out, punching the steering wheel. He was saying that they, they ruined his life. Some of the stuff I couldn't make out, it was so loud and I kept repeating myself. I was like, no one's worth your life, nobody's worth you listening to and have it affect your life. Nobody's worth your freedom over this. I took it as being extremely threatening and then at some point, like I, he was driving erratically. I begged him to pull over and let me drive. I thought we're gonna crash. At some point he did punch me in the face, told me to shut the F up, shut the F up, ‘do not say another word.’

Card finally pulled over, and Hodgson got out of the car. But despite having just been punched by Card, Hodgson told him this before walking away:

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Sean Hodgson: I was like, hey, just so you know, I love you, I'll always be there for you, um I'll never give up on you. He shut the door and he slowly, he had that blank stare on his face. He wouldn't even look at me when I was talking to him.

Sgt. Hodgson called up his command at the Army Reserve and expressed his concerns. And just to make sure his message didn’t get lost, he followed up with a text.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission Member: And in that text, you said, change the passcode to the unit gate and be armed if SFC Card does arrive, period. Please, period. I believe he's messed up in the head, period.

Sean Hodgson: I was afraid he was going to go there and knowing how capable he is, it might escalate from there because I literally just witnessed him getting worse and worse and worse and it was quickly escalating.

The text ended with these words: I believe he’s going to snap and do a mass shooting.

Mary Ellen O’Toole: That comment that his friend made, his military friend made about his concern that Card might go on to commit a mass shooting really should have gotten people's attention because it's coming from someone that has the military background, it’s coming from someone that knew Card, should have, must rise to the level of being so credible and so important that everyone that heard it should have said, on a scale of 1 to 5 we give this a 10.

That chilling text message, that Card might snap and commit a mass shooting, was flagged to two local police departments by members of the Army Reserve. So at this point, the Army Reserve had been alerted to Card’s behavior at least three times, and local police departments had gotten warnings about him on two separate occasions. This latest warning prompted a visit to Card’s home by a county police officer who hadn’t previously been involved — Police Sgt. Aaron Skolfield.

And his role is critical. By this time, there is ample evidence that something deeply alarming is happening with Card — he’s even been hospitalized.

And so, Sgt. Skolfield goes to Card's house.

The first time he went, it didn’t look like anyone was home, and he stayed just a few minutes. But the second time, Card was home.

Sgt. Skolfield fell back and waited for another officer to back him up.

Sgt. Skolfield approached the door, knocked, then backed away. It seems like the sergeant was intimidated: after all, Card was reportedly paranoid — and confirmed to be armed. They waited around a while, discussing what to do. Sgt. Skolfield later said in testimony that he felt that there wasn’t much that they could do.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Sgt. Aaron Skolfield: Now here's the problem, here's the hurdle. I can't beat down his door. I can't break down his door. He hasn't committed a crime that allows me to do that.

When he testified before the Commission, Sgt. Skolfield defended himself. He argued that without that face-to-face contact, his hands were tied under Maine's yellow flag law.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Commission Member: What did you learn about the yellow flag process?

Sgt. Aaron Skolfield: The nuts and bolts of it are that you have to take someone into protective custody. Then and only then can you begin the yellow flag process.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Commission Member: According to Hodgson, Card said he has guns and is going to shoot up the drill center at Saco and other places, right?

Sgt. Aaron Skolfield: Yes.

Commission Member: Did you think that that constituted terrorizing under Maine law?

Sgt. Aaron Skolfield: Again, that depends. I threaten to kill my kids all the time. You don't clean your room, I'm gonna kill you. What context was the seriousness of the comment?

This question about whether this threat constituted “terrorizing”? It’s being asked because terrorizing is a crime, and law enforcement could have taken Card into protective custody on those charges.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Sgt. Aaron Skolfield: It was not my intention to take him into protective custody. My intention was to do an assessment and go where that leads me. I was trying to figure out how to skin this cat from a different direction. I can't make him come out. I can't make him answer the door. I can't make him talk to me. But at the same time, I just can't go barging in his trailer because he has Fourth Amendment issues against illegal search and seizure. He hasn't committed a crime that anybody wants to um, say, yeah, ‘I'd like him charged with that.’ No one, no one would come forward. So I'm thinking, how else are we going to do this?

According to police Sgt. Skolfield, the friend of Card’s who’d sent that foreshadowing text was considered by some to be an unreliable narrator, and so the message wasn’t taken as seriously as it might have been.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Sgt. Aaron Skolfield: Sergeant Hodgson's… had a, had a reputation of being a bit of an alarmist. Exaggerating the truth. It seemed to me like a game of hot potato.

Commission Member: What do you mean?

Sgt. Aaron Skolfield: Here's something that could be bad and ugly here. Here you go. You catch. You deal with it.

In September 2023, it was police Sgt. Skolfield that was holding that hot potato. He made some phone calls to Card’s family. He wrote a report. And then, just a few days later, he went on vacation. No one else was left in charge of the case.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Commission Member: Let me ask you this. What protections were in place on September 18th when you went on leave that were not in place when you first got the call on September 15th?

Sgt. Aaron Skolfield: What protections in what sense?

Commission Member: What protections that Robert Card wasn't going to hurt somebody with his guns?

Sgt. Aaron Skolfield: There wasn't any more protection than anyone else.

In the end, Sgt. Skolfield never spoke to Card at all. And he didn’t get more information about another issue — Card’s arsenal of guns.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Commission Member: Did you at any time was able to find out what type of firearms and how many firearms he had?

Sgt. Aaron Skolfield: I didn't, I didn't think to ask the question. And to me, a gun is a gun is a gun. They can all hurt.

When Sgt. Skolfield got back from vacation, he canceled a statewide alert that he’d put out about Robert Card that warned law enforcement about a potentially dangerous person.

And that was that. Without looking into it any further, without checking to see if Card was still in the throes of a crisis, Sgt. Skolfield closed Card’s case. No arrest made, no charges filed, no yellow flag petition brought to a judge.

Card got to keep his weapons — and in the end, he used them. Sgt. Skolfield maintains that he did as much as the law allowed him to do, and that he thought at the time that talking with Card might have just made things worse.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Sgt. Aaron Skolfield: I can't make him open the door. I can't kick in the door. Had I kicked in the door, it would have been a violation of law. I didn't want to throw that stick of dynamite into a pool of gas and create a, uh, create a situation that, you know, ideally, we all, we all know how we wish this would have turned out.

But according to the final report released by the commission, law enforcement could have found a reason to make an arrest. For example, Card had recently punched his friend Sean Hodgson. Mary O’Toole says it was an opportunity.

Mary Ellen O’Toole: To say, well, I can arrest you because you, you hit your friend, and that gives me probable cause to make that arrest. I think, were this to happen again, in Maine, the same fact pattern, I think law enforcement would sit down with the prosecutor's office. They would sit down with the military and they'd say, Do we have some reason — with all of us here at the table — do we have a reason, a viable reason to bring Robert in right now? Has he made a threat? Has he done something that has broken the law? What can we creatively come up with? Because our end goal is to protect people's lives here.

One would hope that’s true. But there’s nothing new in Maine’s law to guarantee it. And as terrible as this shooting is, how long can we rely on institutional memory to hope a better choice is made next time?

There's plenty of testimony the commission collected about the shooting itself, and the chaotic law enforcement response that resulted in a two-day manhunt for Card involving hundreds of law enforcement officers. He was ultimately found dead, having committed suicide, in his workplace parking lot.

(Music)

In March, Card’s family released a report by researchers at Boston University, who’d conducted an autopsy of Card’s brain.

ARCHIVAL News Anchor 1: Doctors say they found, quote, significant evidence of traumatic brain injuries at the time of the shootings…

ARCHIVAL News Anchor 2: In the brain tissue analyzed, there was damage to nerve fibers in the white matter, which allow for communication between parts of the brain. Likely the result of blast injury.”

It was important to them that the public know that this was not a healthy brain.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / James Herling: Robbie had a severe, severe traumatic brain injury, that was caused by our own military — not by being in war. This is not an excuse for the behavior and action that Robbie committed. It was a wrongful act of evil. My brother in law was not this man. His brain was hijacked.

The question of how to prevent tragedies like the Lewiston shooting must consider not just how to successfully intervene when someone is spiraling toward violence, but also what can be done earlier — to prevent a mental health crisis in the first place. And for Card’s family, that means talking about what led to the “hijacking” of Card’s brain, as they put it.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Nicole Herling: This type of exposure can happen during combat. But they are finding it among our soldiers who have never served in combat.

It's unjust to continue training with explosions and sonic booms until there are protective gear and standards ensuring the safety of all our soldiers' brains.

Ultimately, the issue of traumatic brain injury was beyond the scope of the commission’s investigation. And the Army says it doesn't have any record of Card experiencing significant brain trauma while he was on duty. But it’s a key issue in the U.S. military today, and I wanted to understand better how Card’s case might be evaluated in light of new research, which reveals that not just big blasts, but many small blasts, can have a catastrophic effect on the brain.

Michael Lewis: When you feel a blast wave go through you, it's an odd feeling.

Dr. Michael Lewis knows a thing or two about how these blasts impact the brain. Both from his work as a physician treating veterans, and firsthand having served in the military for over 30 years. He describes what a blast does to the human body.

Michael Lewis: And the best way to picture it, whether you slip on ice, you fall, you hit the back of your head, and your brain keeps moving until it hits your skull. Well, the harder, more dense parts of the brain, deep inside the brain, keep moving too. And because they're different densities, they're going to come to a stop at different rates. It's not that it's the damage to the brain, as much as it is the damage to the connections between the different parts of the brain. And it's the connections between those different parts of the brain that really make all the difference in the world.

Peter Bergen: It seems like, that somebody like Robert Card, who was repeatedly being exposed to these blasts, he was having paranoia, he was hearing voices. Again, I know it's hard to diagnose somebody who's not your patient, but how does that, his kind of symptoms square with what looks like repeated traumatic brain injury?

Michael Lewis: I would say that the idea that he is having psychotic type of symptoms, I would be curious to understand more about his genetic susceptibility to that as well as his environmental, as well as his upbringing. Because if you think of how many hand grenade instructors there have been over time and they don't all go shooting up —

Peter Bergen: Well that's a very good point.

Michael Lewis: And so I think we're talking about a major, major exception here. And so I would think that it's probably not just the exposures that he had from hand grenade blasts, but all the other factors that have to be taken into account.

The report by Boston University researchers about Card’s brain reached a similar conclusion, saying that while it’s not definitive that the damage was responsible for his behavior change, it is likely that it played a role.

Peter Bergen: There’s an estimate out there that he started getting exposed to blasts roughly around 2014. He could have been exposed to as many as 10,000. Is that a lot? Is that just the cost of doing business with this kind of gig?

Michael Lewis: I would say there's very much the cost of doing business. The Undersecretary of Defense released a memo uh, to the combatant commanders and to the services basically saying we need to address this. And so one of the things that memo came out and said is for specific weapons systems to have a standoff for anybody that is not immediately doing that activity.

Peter Bergen: A standoff meaning, like, if somebody's shooting an artillery round, the other people in the unit need to be 100 feet back or whatever.

Michael Lewis: X number of feet back, right? Are there ways to mitigate the risks? You're not necessarily eliminating the risks, but can you mitigate them? Can you lessen the risks? Years ago the military came out with helmet sensors to try to measure these blast exposures and they had to quickly do away with the program because they kept setting off these sensors every time they fired a weapon. And so it was like, wait a minute, well you know, how do we deal with that? And the answer at the time was they stopped using that technology.

Michael Lewis: So we've got to look at how do we mitigate the exposures in other ways. For example, if you're in a reserve unit or a National Guard unit, and you're the hand grenade instructor, you shouldn't be doing that for 10 years. You should be rotating out after, say, two years or X number of exposures. And so you, you rotate people in and limit the exposures would —

Peter Bergen: That's a great idea. Is it happening yet?

Michael Lewis: Not that I'm aware of, unless it's being done at the unit level because the commander, you know, is thinking and making that happen.

While the damaging impact of large blasts on the brain is well established, new research on the cumulative effect of repeated small blasts is just starting to get attention.

A recent report by a Department of Defense lab found that many Navy SEALs who died by suicide had been repeatedly exposed to small blasts. Most of the damage that their brains had sustained had come — like Card — not from combat. It happened when they were training to fight.

In September, Senator Elizabeth Warren questioned Pentagon officials about blast pressure and suicides.

ARCHIVAL Elizabeth Warren: The early evidence is flashing red, and I'm very disturbed that our current suicide strategy does not aggressively take into account the possible links between blast overpressure exposure and suicide risk.

The testimony illustrated not one but two systemic failures: the injuries from the blasts themselves, resulting in poor memory, depression, and suicidal thoughts. And then there’s the damage done when military personnel are stigmatized for seeking help.

(Music)

In August, the Maine Commission released their final report. It didn’t discuss brain injury, and it didn’t contain any policy recommendations — they left that to lawmakers, to the frustration of some Mainers who saw it as a missed opportunity. But the report does come down hard on two people: Sgt. Aaron Skolfield, the police officer who went on vacation and then closed Card's file. And Jeremy Reamer, Card’s commander in the Army Reserve, who, according to the commission's findings, was told by psychiatric staff that he needed to get Card’s weapons secured, and failed to do so.

O'Toole said that she was taken aback by the way the commission singled these two people out.

Mary Ellen O’Toole: Honestly, I cringed when I saw how directly the fingers were being pointed at specific individuals. I think we get derailed when we go off into the direction of saying these two people didn't do their job repeatedly, and they're at fault. We get that. Everybody who reads this report gets that. To make sure that we don't see another crisis like this, we have to break it down and say, this is what has to take place the next time. This is what doesn't take place. Yes, we can blame people, but that stops the critical thinking process right there. And we need to get beyond that and we need to say, there could be many people in a different situation, another Skolfield, another Reamer but what can we do that will help this behavior not to repeat itself?

Sgt. Aaron Skolfield, who has pushed back on the commission’s conclusions as “misleading,” is now running for Sheriff. The Lewiston shooting, and his role in the leadup to it, have cast a shadow over his campaign, but not enough to make him drop out.

So what did he learn from the shooting? And what did the Maine Commission learn?

That the yellow flag law is confusing, and cumbersome in ways that make it potentially ineffective in a crisis.

That it’s easy, with multiple law enforcement agencies, to pass that hot potato from one officer to the next, and even back to the family.

That just because someone in crisis receives mental health treatment doesn’t mean that the crisis is over.

And that when someone should take authority over a very bad situation, but no one is required to, it’s likely that no one will.

Maine did strengthen some of its gun laws after the shooting. It instituted a 72-hour waiting period for certain purchases, and made it easier to prosecute someone who sells a gun to someone who is not allowed to have one.

And maybe there is some evidence that Maine law enforcement is changing its approach: Before the shooting, Maine’s yellow flag law had never been used in that county to take away guns from someone in a mental health crisis. In the year since, the county has used it at least 18 times.

Even so, a proposal to institute a red flag law — one that would have allowed Robert Card’s family to directly petition a judge to take away his guns — never made it to a vote among Maine lawmakers. Now, gun safety advocates are trying a new tack: asking voters directly. They’re campaigning to get a red flag law proposal on the ballot in Maine in the next few years.

(Music)

Of all of the many hours of testimony, I'm haunted by the words of Card's ex-wife, Cara Lamb. Because as dark as they are, we are trapped in a reality where they feel inevitably true.

ARCHIVAL Lewiston Commission / Cara Lamb: There's going to be a next time. What's the answer going to be the next time? What is going to be said to them?

This is the perfect moment for all of us to do better and to learn.

I really hope that somebody with enough power, more power than I… can help remove some heads out of asses and get some shit done because this is enough.

If you want to learn some more about the topics we covered in today’s episode, we recommend…. When Brains Collide by Dr. Michael Lewis, and Dangerous Instincts, by Mary Ellen O'Toole and Alisa Bowman, which is available on Audible.

CREDITS

In the Room with Peter Bergen is an Audible Original, produced by Audible Studios and Fresh Produce Media.

This episode was produced by Laura Tillman and Holly DeMuth.

Our executive producer is Alison Craiglow.

Katie McMurran is our technical director.

Our staff also includes Alexandra Salomon, Erik German, Luke Cregan, Nathan Ray and Sandy Melara.

Our theme music is by Joel Pickard.

Our Executive Producers for Fresh Produce Media are Colin Moore and Jason Ross.

Our Head of Production is Elena Bawiec.

Maureen Traynor is our Head of Operations.

And our Delivery Coordinator is Ana Paula Martinez.

Audible’s Chief Content Officer: Rachel Ghiazza