Report: Guns should have been seized weeks before 18 died in Maine

PORTLAND, Maine — Law enforcement should have seized a man’s guns and put him in protective custody weeks before he committed Maine’s deadliest mass shooting, a report found Friday.

An independent commission has been reviewing the events that led up to Army reservist Robert Card killing 18 people at a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston on Oct. 25, as well as the subsequent response.

The commission criticized Sgt. Aaron Skolfield, who responded to a report five weeks before the shooting that Card was suffering from some sort of mental health crisis after he’d previously assaulted a friend and threatened to shoot up the Saco Armory.

The commission found Skolfield, of the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office, should have realized he had probable cause to start a so-called “yellow flag” process, which allows a judge to temporarily remove somebody’s guns during a psychiatric health crisis.

Leroy Walker, whose son Joseph was killed in the shootings, said the commission’s finding that the yellow flag law could have been implemented but wasn’t reflected what victims’ families have known all along.

“The commission said it straight out — that they could have done it, should have done it,” said Walker, an Auburn City Council member. “What something like this really does is it brings up everything … It just breaks the heart all over again.”

Maine State Police and the sheriff ’s office did not immediately respond to calls seeking comment.

Commission Chair Daniel Wathen said their work wasn’t finished and that the interim report was intended to provide policymakers and law enforcement with key information they had learned.

“Nothing we do can ever change what happened on that terrible day, but knowing the facts can help provide the answers that the victims, their families, and the people of Maine need and deserve,” Wathen said in a statement.

Ben Gideon, an attorney representing the victims, said he felt the report focused heavily on the actions of the sheriff ’s office while ignoring the broader issue of access to guns by potentially dangerous people in the state.

Elizabeth Seal, whose husband Joshua was killed in the shootings, said she felt the focus of the report was “narrow.”

“I’m in agreement with the committee’s findings as far as they go, and I do think it’s a legitimate point that the Sagadahoc Sheriff’s Office could have done more to intervene,” Gideon said. “I was a little disappointed that the committee didn’t take a wider view of the issues that start as far back as May.”