Maine gunman may have targeted businesses over delusions they were disparaging him online
Nov 1, 2023, 5:00 AM
Crime scene tape still surrounds Schemengees Bar & Grille, Sunday, Oct. 29, 2023, in Lewiston, Maine. The community is working to heal following shooting deaths of 18 people at the bar and a bowling alley in Lewiston on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Matt York)
(AP Photo/Matt York)
Maine State Police documents released Tuesday shed light on why a delusional U.S. Army reservist who killed 18 people at a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston may have targeted those locations.
Robert Card, 40, was found dead Friday, two days after a rampage that also wounded 13 people and shut down multiple communities during a massive search on land and water.
Three hours after the shooting began, state police interviewed a woman who said Card believed the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley, Schemengees Bar and Grille and several other businesses were “broadcasting online that Robert was a pedophile.”
The woman said Card had been delusional since February after a break-up, had been hospitalized for mental illness and prescribed medication that he stopped taking, according to a police affidavit filed in support of an arrest warrant request.
Police also spoke to Robert’s brother, who said Card had been in relationship with someone he met at a cornhole competition at the bar. Another man said the same thing to a different officer, according to an affidavit filed in a request to access Card’s cell phone records.
That man told police he had been to both the bowling alley and bar with Card, and that Card knew people at both locations. He said Card’s girlfriend had two daughters that he would take out to eat at Schemengees, “and that is where the pedophile thing in Robert’s head came from as Robert was there with (his girfriend’s) two daughters on occasions and felt that people were looking at him.”
The man said Card also mentioned bar manager Joey Walker was one of the people who Card thought had disparaged him. Walker was among those killed.
Card’s son also told police that paranoia about strangers calling him a pedophile had become a recurring theme for his father since last winter.
He also accused fellow members of his Army reserve unit of calling him a pedophile in an incident in July that prompted Army officials to have him undergo a mental health evaluation. He then spent two weeks at a private psychiatric hospital in New York.
