The Maine Army reservist who gunned down 18 people in a mass shooting last year had suffered traumatic brain injuries before his fatal rampage.
Robert Card, 40, died from a self-inflicted gunshot after the massacre in Lewiston on Oct. 25. In the months since, evidence of his mental health decline has surfaced.
Maine’s chief medical examiner requested a tissue analysis of Card’s brain, and his family released the results on Wednesday night.
Scientists at Boston University found “significant degeneration, inflammation, small blood vessel injury” and further damage to “the nerve fibers that allow for communication between different areas of the brain,” the Boston Globe reported.
“While I cannot say with certainty that these pathological findings underlie Mr. Card’s behavioral changes in the last 10 months of life, based on our previous work, brain injury likely played a role in his symptoms,” said Dr. Ann McKee of the university’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Center.
Card’s brain showed no signs of CTE, which has been found in many football players and can only be diagnosed after death.
As part of his work as an Army reservist, Card was an instructor at a hand grenade training range. In that role, he was likely exposed to thousands of low-level blasts.
The deterioration of Card’s mental health has been examined in the weeks and months since the shooting. In July 2023, Card was taken to a hospital after he shoved another reservist and locked himself in a motel closet. Witnesses said Card accused the other men of believing he was a pedophile and lashed out.
After several curious incidents, one of Card’s longtime friends, Sean Hodgson, reported his pal up the chain of command in September 2023, just weeks before the shooting.
“I believe he’s going to snap and do a mass shooting,” Hodgson told their supervisor. However, his report was ignored, as leaders called him “not the most credible.”
“I did my job, and I went over and beyond it, and I literally spelled it out for them,” Hodgson said in a January interview. “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.”
With News Wire Services
