Police were alerted to mass shooter Robert Card’s erratic behavior last month but he fell off their radar after they were unable to find him during a wellness check, according to new information emerging on Sunday.
“He slipped through the cracks. There were warning signs,” Jody Madeira, a professor and gun law expert, said in an assessment of Card who killed 18 people during a shooting spree at a bowling alley and bar in Lewiston, Maine, last week.
The comments came in response to new information about Card, who was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound Friday after an exhaustive three-day manhunt.
Local law enforcement officials revealed Card was on their radar as recently as September after making threats to commit a mass shooting at his Army Reserve base in Saco, Maine. It was the second time he had engaged in such behavior after making threats during an Army training exercise in West Point, New York, in July.
The incident resulted in Card being committed to a mental health facility for two weeks after claiming he had been “hearing voices and threats to shoot up” the base, according to police.
The incident in September resulted in stepped-up security on the base in Saco and a welfare check to Card’s home address, where police didn’t find him. After police failed to contact Card he apparently fell off their radar, without being reported to the FBI or other police agencies.
The revelation came amidst news Card had attempted to purchase a silencer for his rifle from a gun shop in Lewiston three months before last week’s shooting. Personnel at Coastal Defense Firearms prevented Card from making the purchase after he disclosed his prior commitment to a mental institution on a form.
"We did what we were supposed to do and hopefully saved a lot of lives by … just following the proper procedures,” Rick LaChappelle, owner of the Coastal Defense Firearms company, told US media of the encounter.
The mass shooting has rekindled a periodic debate over gun control in the United States which suffers from an epidemic of gun deaths. The Maine mass shooting proved to be the deadliest shooting incident this year alone. Political opposition and the influence of the gun lobby repeatedly combine to make significant regulation of firearms impossible in the country.