The man who killed 18 people in a mass shooting last year in Lewiston, Maine, had traumatic brain injuries that likely influenced his actions in the final months of his life, according to a new analysis released Wednesday.
Army reservist Robert Card, 40, carried out the shootings at a bowling alley and a bar Oct. 25, sparking a multistate manhunt that ended when he was found dead days later by suicide.
Maine's chief medical examiner’s office requested the post-mortem study of Card’s brain, which was carried out by Boston University CTE Center and released by Card’s family.
“Robert Card had evidence of traumatic brain injury. In the white matter, the nerve fibers that allow for communication between different areas of the brain, there was significant degeneration, axonal and myelin loss, inflammation, and small blood vessel injury,” lead author Ann McKee said in a statement issued by the family and the Concussion Legacy Foundation.
The family apologized for the attack and said they hoped that publicizing the findings of the scan might help “prevent future tragedies.”
The findings align with previous studies on the effects of blast injuries, McKee said. Card was a firearms instructor and worked at an Army hand grenade training range, where he may have been exposed to thousands of blasts, the statement said.
“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,” she continued.
Card was suffering an acute mental health episode at the time of the shooting, his family said, and had begun to hear voices that led to his forming a paranoid “manic belief” that others were against him. He spent two weeks undergoing psychiatric inpatient treatment.
Further studies on Card’s brain continue.
Card’s family said in a statement how “deeply sorry and heartbroken we are for all the victims, survivors and their loved ones.”
“While we cannot go back, we are releasing the findings of Robert’s brain study with the goal of supporting ongoing efforts to learn from this tragedy to ensure it never happens again,” they said.
The family added that the new evidence does “not fully explain Robert’s actions, nor is it an excuse for the horrific suffering he caused.”
But they thanked McKee for helping them understand Card's brain damage and how it may have affected his mental health.
An Army spokesman said in a statement Thursday that the findings "are concerning and underscore the Army’s need to do all it can to protect Soldiers against blast-induced injury."
The statement said the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Army are "updating guidance on how to mitigate risks from blast overpressure" and will soon begin a safety campaign around blast overpressure.
Army officials testified Thursday before a special commission investigating the shooting, which is the deadliest in Maine history.
