2023-10-27 21:09:08
Added to the difficulty of finding a suspect in a rural area full of trees is that Robert R. Card is trained to hide and leave no trace. The alleged attacker from Maine is 40 years old and it has been almost two decades since he enlisted in the military reserves, hence his experience with firearms. His former Army colleagues claim that he was one of the best in his unit, “an expert marksman,” retired FBI agent Rob D’Amico explained to CNN television.
His skill with weapons and his ability to move like a ghost, without being seen, through an area he knows like the back of his hand, has disturbed the tranquility of a population, which is the first time that it has experienced a nightmare like that of the last 72 hours. Overnight, the harmony of Lewiston and its surrounding areas disappeared as more than 300 officers took to its streets and highways in a grueling Operation Cage.
Clifford Steeves, who served with Robert Card in the Army Reserves in 2002, described him as “a very nice, calm guy,” as well as a “rational, understanding person.” Apparently, those who know him say, he is “pretty normal.” Perhaps that is why those around him were concerned when on July 17 the alleged attacker threatened his comrades while he was serving at the Camp Smith training center in New York. He began to say that he was hearing voices and that he wanted to harm the soldiers who were with him. It was then that the officers of the Third Battalion of the Army Reserve denounced him for “erratic behavior.”
Card was taken to Keller Army Community Hospital at the United States Military Academy for “a medical evaluation,” according to a National Guard spokesperson. Previously, he had also threatened to shoot up a Maine National Guard base.
These situations led him to enter a mental health center for two weeks last summer, but his sister-in-law, Katie O’Neill, assured the local media that “this was just an acute episode”, that Card “is not someone who has had mental health problems throughout his life or anything like that.
Despite everything, the alleged attacker’s military identification had not been canceled and he never had problems keeping his weapon. In this sense, the Democratic congressman from Maine, Jared Golden, backtracked on Thursday afternoon in his opposition to banning assault weapons, because “the time has come for him to assume responsibility for this failure,” he confessed in a press conference, “which is why I now ask the United States Congress to ban assault rifles.” The State of Maine is one of the permissive states when it comes to carrying and acquiring firearms. No license is necessary to carry a weapon (whether in plain sight or hidden), and when purchasing them, buyers are exempt from criminal background checks, as well as determining whether they have any type of disability or mental problem. Additionally, Maine does not apply the Red-Flag Law, which allows law enforcement to seize a weapon from people who may represent a danger to society or themselves.
The reality is that Card has received several awards for his work, including the Army Achievement, Army Reserve Component Achievement, Humanitarian Service, National Defense Service, and Army Service Ribbon medals. All thanks to his work as a petroleum supply specialist in the Army Reserve, knowledge he acquired during his long professional experience and the Engineering Technology studies he completed at the University of Maine between 2001 and 2004, even though he did not would graduate.
Some local media pointed out that he had been reported for domestic abuse, information that has not yet been confirmed, and that it is good to take with a grain of salt because in the hours prior to an event as traumatic as this, many poorly contrasted data are written and commented on. Like the attacker was teaching shooting. It is true that he is a certified firearms instructor, but he never practiced as such.
These last two shootings perpetrated by Robert Card have once again put the eternal debate on firearms control in the United States on the table. A country that since the year 2023 began has experienced more than 565 mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive, meaning “mass shooting” when four or more people die, excluding the shooter.
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