Army reservist who warned about Maine killer before shootings to testify before investigators
AUGUSTA, Maine — A U.S. Army reservist who gave the clearest warning ahead of Maine’s deadliest mass shooting is expected to answer questions Thursday from the committee investigating the tragedy.
Six weeks before Robert Card murdered eighteen people at a bar and bowling alley in Lewiston, his best friend and fellow reservist Sean Hodgson texted their supervisors telling them to change the gate passcode to their Army Reserve training facility and had to arm themselves as Card showed up.
“I believe he is going to commit a mass shooting,” Hodgson wrote on September 15.
That message came months after family members alerted police that Card had become paranoid and said they were concerned about his access to weapons. Authorities’ failure to remove guns from Card’s possession in the weeks before the shooting has become the subject of a monthslong investigation in the state, which has also passed new gun safety laws since the tragedy.
Card was also committed to a psychiatric hospital for two weeks in July, and the military banned him from having weapons while on duty. But other than briefly staking out the reserve center and visiting Card’s home, authorities refused to confront him. He was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound two days after the shooting.
In an interim report released last month, the independent commission established by Gov. Jane Mills concluded that the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office had probable cause under Maine’s “yellow flag” law to take Card into custody and confiscate his weapons. It also criticized the police for not following up with Hodgson over his warning text.
On Thursday, the committee plans to hear from the state director of victim witness services. Hodgson told The Associated Press that he will be questioned Thursday morning.
In an exclusive series of interviews in January, Hodgson told The AP that he met Card in the Army Reserve in 2006 and that they became close friends after both divorced their spouses around the same time. They lived together for about a month in 2022, and when Card was hospitalized in New York in July, Hodgson drove him back to Maine.
Increasingly concerned about his friend’s mental health, Hodgson alerted authorities after an incident in which Card began ‘passing out’ after a night of gambling, banging on the steering wheel and nearly crashing several times. After ignoring his pleas to stop, Card punched him in the face, Hodgson said.
“It took me a lot of effort to report someone I love,” he said. “But when the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, you have to listen.”
Some officials downplayed Hodgson’s warning and suggested he may have been drunk due to the late hour of his text. Army Reserve Capt. Jeremy Reamer described him as “not the most credible of our soldiers” and said his message should be taken “with a grain of salt.”
Hodgson said he struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder and alcohol addiction, but said he didn’t drink and was awake that night because he was working nights and waiting for his boss to call.