Army Reservist who had fought with Lewiston shooter says he was 'terrified' on night of mass shooting
Apr. 25—AUGUSTA — Six months to the day after the mass shooting that left 18 people dead in Lewiston, the soldier who Robert Card threatened during the unit's annual training in New York last July, said in public testimony Thursday that he was "terrified" when Card was identified as the shooter and spent the night in hiding out of fear for his and his family's safety.
Daryl Reed is one of several members of Card's Army Reserve unit expected to address the commission Thursday during a meeting at the University of Maine at Augusta's Jewett Auditorium. The hearing is being streamed live over Zoom.
Reed told commissioners that he was in Auburn with his family on Oct. 25 when Card entered Just-In-Time Recreation and started shooting.
"In the back of my head I thought Card, but it wasn't definite," Reed said, before describing how his fellow Reservists were quickly texting one another, identifying Card as the shooter.
He said Winthrop police told him not to go home because of Card's prior threats.
Members are also scheduled to hear from Sean Hodgson, who warned his Army commanders that Card might snap and commit a mass shooting. Hodgson told the Associated Press earlier this year that he was the last friend Card pushed away as his mental health worsened. It was his warning that prompted a Sagadahoc County deputy to try to check on Card in September, but that came to nothing after Card refused to answer the door.
Edward Yurek, who Card's brother called sometime on the night of the shooting to warn Yurek that Card might go to Harpswell to target his ex-girlfriend or ex-wife, is expected to testify later Thursday afternoon.
A victim witness advocate from the attorney general's office, Cara Cookson, was the first to testify as the meeting got underway at the University of Maine at Augusta's Jewett Auditorium.
The commission, a collection of lawyers, doctors and judges hand-picked by Gov. Janet Mills in the wake of the shooting in Lewiston last October, has for months been investigating why officials failed to stop Card even after receiving several warnings about his declining mental health and erratic behavior. In an interim report released last month, the commission blasted members of the Sagadahoc Sheriff's Office for not directly confronting Card after learning he had punched Hodgson and threatened to attack the Army Reserve base in Saco.
But the report also criticized the unit's leaders for failing to share key information with police about Card's recent hospitalization and for "minimizing" the threat he posed. And the commission's tense cross-examination of Capt. Jeremy Reamer at a public hearing earlier this month suggested their scrutiny of the Army was just beginning.
When they first testified publicly in March, Reamer and Sgt. Kelvin Mote said they were largely left in the dark about Card's mental health diagnosis and treatment plan after his two-week involuntary stay in a New York psychiatric hospital during the summer. Yet when Reamer appeared back in front of the group two weeks ago, the commission relentlessly hammered him about pieces of his story that Army documents appeared to contradict.
At that April 11 hearing, former assistant U.S. attorney Toby Dilworth referenced several medical records and internal Army emails that showed that Reamer had been told to keep Card away from guns both while on military duty and at home.
He was also supposed to make sure Card attended his follow-up medical appointments and submitted to an evaluation that could result in his discharge from the Army, but he did neither. This was partly because Reamer's email system was down during the summer and he missed some messages and partly because he and Mote were relying on Hodgson to keep an eye on Card, he said.
Hodgson, whom several unit members described as a close friend of Card's, was among the first people to report that Card was acting paranoid last spring, according to Mote's testimony in March. It was he who picked up Card from the psychiatric hospital in August and who first tried to coordinate a plan with Card's family to secure his large collection of firearms.
After Card hinted in September he was going to take revenge on the many people he mistakenly believed were accusing him of being a pedophile, Hodgson warned Mote and Reamer through a series of late night texts.
"I love (him) to death, but I do not know how to help him and he refuses to get help or to continue help," he wrote in a text to Mote. "And yes he still has all of his weapons."
Mote asked a fellow Ellsworth police officer to pass the concern to Sagadahoc, but police never reached out directly to Hodgson. Aaron Skolfield, the Sagadahoc deputy who investigated the case and failed to get Card to open the door, told the Press Herald this week that he didn't contact Hodgson because Mote and Reamer questioned his reliability, and he trusted their judgment as police officers.
Mote and Reamer have denied they downplayed the threats.
This story will be updated.
