The Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s office was warned last month by the Army Reserve that Robert Card might snap and commit a mass shooting.
The warning came in the middle of September and officers went to do a welfare check on him at his residence, but he wasn’t there.
After beefing up patrols for a couple of weeks, the case was set aside when they simply couldn’t find Card.
The Daily Mail has more:
Two local law enforcement chiefs revealed over the weekend how a statewide awareness alert was sent in mid-September to be on the lookout for Robert Card after the firearms instructor made threats against his base and fellow soldiers.
Patrols were stepped-up on the base and a visit was paid to Card’s home only six weeks ago – neither of which turned up any sign of him – after which, they moved on.
During the welfare check a sergeant from the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office was told ‘when [he] answers the door at his trailer, in the past he usually does so with a handgun in hand out of view from the person outside.’
A letter from the National Guard shared by a fellow guardsman noted how they were ‘concerned that [the reservist] is going to snap and commit a mass shooting.’
Sagadahoc County Sheriff Joel Merry, whose jurisdiction includes Card’s home in Bowdoin, said the Army Reserve tipped off his department in September to the reservist’s threats but when he wasn’t there, the case was set aside.
‘We added extra patrols, we did that for about two weeks. … The guy never showed up,’ said Jack Clements, the police chief in Saco, home to the U.S. Army Reserve base where Card trained.
The sheriff then sent the awareness alert to every law enforcement agency in the state after his deputy came back empty-handed from a welfare check to Card’s home.
‘We couldn’t locate him,’ Merry said, adding that he couldn’t recall if there was any follow-up because ‘I don’t have any reports in front of me.’
There were other warning signs revealed over the weekend…
There were other warning signs too: a gun shop owner revealed over the weekend how in July Card walked in with the intention of purchasing a silencer.
‘He came in and filled out the form, he checked off a box that incriminated himself saying that he was in an institution,’ Rick LaChapelle, owner of Coastal Defense Firearms, told ABC News.
‘Our staff was fantastic, let him finish filling out the form, and said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Card, we cannot give you this… at this point in time, we cannot release this silencer to you because of the answers that you’ve given us.”
‘We did what we were supposed to do and hopefully saved a lot of lives by the proper, just following the proper procedures,’ LaChapelle said.
He believes that if the silencer would have been used, even more people might have lost their lives as they would not have been able to hear the gunshots being fired – allowing some to run for cover.
This just proves that even when people do the right thing and alert law enforcement, who clearly followed up and tried to find Card, that sometimes it just isn’t enough to stop something like this. It’s probably better for them that they couldn’t find Card, because if they had found him and this still happened, there’d be a lot more questions.