Police who declined to confront an Army reservist in the weeks before he killed 18 people in Maine’s deadliest mass shooting feared that doing so would “throw a stick of dynamite on a pool of gas,” according to video released Friday by law enforcement.
The video, which was released to the Portland Press Herald and then sent to The Associated Press, documents a Sept. 16 call between Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Sgt. Aaron Skolfield and Army Reserve Capt. Jeremy Reamer. Skolfield was following up with Reamer about the potential threat posed by Robert Card, 40, who carried out the Oct. 25 attacks at a bowling alley and a restaurant. He was found dead two days later of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Military officials alerted police in September that Card had been hospitalized in July after exhibiting erratic behavior while training, that he still had access to weapons and that he had threatened to “shoot up” an Army reserve center in Saco, a city in southern Maine. The sheriff’s department responded by briefly staking out the Saco facility and going to Card’s home in Bowdoin for what Reamer described as a “welfare check.”
“The only thing I would ask is if you could just document it,” Reamer said. “Just say, ’He was there, he was uncooperative. But we confirmed that he was alive and breathing.’ And then we can go from there. That’s, from my end here, all we’re really looking for.”
Skolfield mentioned Maine’s yellow flag law, which can be used to remove guns from potentially dangerous people, after Reamer said Card had refused medical treatment after his hospitalization.
“So that, obviously, is a hurdle we have to deal with. But at the same time, we don’t want to throw a stick of dynamite on a pool of gas, either — make things worse,” he said.
— Patrick Whittle and Holly Ramer in Authorities knew Maine shooter was a threat but felt confronting him was unsafe, video shows