Maine shooter Robert Card’s best friend texted their boss that he feared his former roommate was “going to snap and do a mass shooting” six weeks before the deadly attack – but authorities failed to heed his warning in time.
“I wasn’t in his head. I don’t know exactly what went on. But I know I was right,” Sean Hodgson said of his decision to message his Army reservist supervisor that Card was becoming increasingly angry and paranoid.
“I believe he’s going to snap and do a mass shooting,” Hodgson wrote on Sept. 15 – 40 days before Card fatally shot 18 people at a bowling alley and bar in Lewiston before taking his own life.
“I don’t believe in coincidences. I know it’s Robert Card,” he said he told his sergeant when news broke about the massacre.
“I did my job, and I went over and beyond it, and I literally spelled it out for them,” Hodgson, 43, lamented of the authorities’ non-response to the risk he believed Card posed.
“I don’t know how clear I could have gotten.”
In his original message, Hodgson begged those in charge to change the gate passcode to the Army Reserve training facility and to arm themselves if Card showed up.
“Please, I believe he’s messed up in the head,” Hodgson wrote of Card, who had been his close friend since the pair met in 2006.
By the time Hodgson made his plea, Card’s mental decline was already well-documented: In May, his relatives warned authorities that he was paranoid, and said they were concerned about his access to firearms.
Two months later, the father-of-one was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward for two weeks after he shoved another reservist and locked himself in a motel room.
In August, the Army banned Card from handling weapons while on duty and disqualified him from deployment.
Even so, authorities declined to heed Hodgson’s warning and did not confront Card.
“I understand he did a horrific thing. I don’t agree with it. But I loved him. I didn’t want any of this for anybody,” said Hodgson, who is now appealing an independent report that described his complaints as “over the top” and “alarmist.”
“Any speculation at this point without having all the details could affect the outcome of the investigation. More details may become available once the investigation is complete,” Army Reserve spokesperson Lt. Col. Addie Leonhardt said of the Army’s ongoing investigation into the tragedy.
Sheriff Joel Merry of Sagadahoc County, where Card lived, declined to answer questions about whether Hodgson’s warnings were appropriately followed up.
Hodgson witnessed Card’s descent from the “sensible one” of their friendship into rambling paranoia in the last months of his life, he explained.
Hodgson lived with Card for about a month when he moved to Maine in 2022, he explained.
When Card was hospitalized in New York in July, Hodgson drove him back home.
By that point, Hodgson explained, Card was ranting about how people around him were supposedly accusing him of being a pedophile.
Some of the concerns had merit, Hodgson insisted: Robert Card is the name of a sex offender on another state’s list, and a father at the Lewiston bowling alley had pulled his daughter away when Card said hello to her.
Then, in September, Card started “flipping out” after a night at the Oxford Casino, Hodgson recalled.
His old friend pounded the steering wheel and almost crashed several times, Hodgson explained.
When he begged him to pull over, Card punched him in the face.
“We were having a good night, and he just snapped,” he said.
When he finally got out of the car, Hodgson explained, he told Card “‘I love you, and I’ll always be here for you no matter what.’”
Two days later, he texted their reserve supervisor.
“It took me a lot to report somebody I love. But when the hair starts standing up on the back of your neck, you have to listen,” he said of the decision.
Army officials followed up slightly to ask whether Card had threatened certain people, but Hodgson said he was surprised they did not ask for more help with confronting Card.
“I could’ve told them when he was at work, when he was at home, what hours he worked,” he said.
Although the authorities briefly staked out the Army Reserve Center and Card’s home, they did not approach him due to fears it would “throw a stick of dynamite on a pool of gas,” according to a video released by the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office last month.
In the videos, officials also dismiss Hodgson as “not the most credible of our soldiers” – and even imply that he may have been drunk when he reported his friend.
Hodgson – who is also facing two criminal charges, including one for allegedly assaulting a woman in 2022 – admitted that he does struggle with PTSD and alcoholism, but vowed that he was sober when he texted about Card.
“That was the most difficult thing I ever had to do, was report him to command, and I did that. And for them to discredit me? It pisses me off because all they had to do is listen,” he said.
Stephanie Sherman, an attorney who represented several families of survivors of the Uvalde shooting, agreed that authorities should have had enough information to confront Card and activate Maine’s yellow flag law, which allows a judge to remove an individual’s guns during a psychiatric emergency.
“It was sort of balancing the safety of the public versus this family’s reputation. And that should not be a factor,” she said, noting how Sagadahoc Sheriff Sgt. Aaron Skolfield referred to the Cards as a “big family in the area” in the release videos.
Lewiston shooting survivor Tammy Asselin was also troubled by the footage.
“Listening to that interaction between the military and the sheriff, it hurt me to hear the giggle and the laughter in their voice. Because I don’t think they would be giggling and laughing had they been the ones in my shoes that day, not knowing where their daughter was [when Card opened fire],” she said.
On the day of the shooting, Hodgson recalled, he told authorities that his old friend was likely headed for Maine Recycling Corp.
Card previously worked at the site, and there was a boat launch nearby.
His body was found in a trailer on the property two days later – but only after a regionwide lockdown as police scrambled to put together a search effort.
Nearly three months after the shooting, Hodgson said he resents that Card “took the easy way out” and will not face consequences for what he did.
He is also struggling to accept that his friend of nearly two decades could storm into a busy bowling alley and bar and kill 18 people.
“I don’t know how to express to people how much I loved him, how much I cared about him. And how much I hate what he did,” Hodgson confessed.
With Post wires