Maine gunman’s brain was profoundly damaged
Injuries were similar to those caused by repeated blast exposure
The gunman who committed Maine’s deadliest mass shooting had profound brain damage of the kind seen in veterans exposed to repeated blasts from weapons use, a laboratory examination of the brain found.
The lab’s findings were included in an autopsy report compiled by the Maine chief medical examiner’s office and released by the gunman’s family.
The gunman, Robert Card, was a grenade instructor in the Army Reserve. In 2023, after eight years of being exposed to thousands of skull-shaking blasts on the training range, he began hearing voices and was stalked by paranoid delusions, his family said. He grew increasingly erratic and violent in the months before the October rampage in Lewiston, in which he killed 18 people and then himself.
His brain was sent to Boston University’s CTE Center, a laboratory known for its pioneering work documenting chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in athletes.
According to the lab’s report, prepared Feb. 26 and updated Wednesday, the white matter that forms the wiring deep in the brain had “moderately severe” damage and in some areas was missing entirely.
The delicate tissue sheaths that insulate each biological circuit lay in “disorganized clumps,” and throughout Card’s brain there was scarring and inflammation suggesting repeated trauma.
This was not CTE, the report said. It was a characteristic pattern of damage that has been found before in military veterans who were repeatedly exposed to weapons blasts during their service.
“While it is unclear whether these pathological findings are responsible for Mr. Card’s behavioral changes in the last 10 months of life, based on our previous studies it is likely that brain injury played a role in his symptoms,” the report concluded.
The findings have grave implications for the military because Card never saw combat and had never been exposed to explosions from enemy fire or roadside bombs. The only blasts that hit his brain came from training the Army said was safe. “We know very little about the risks of blast exposure,” said Dr. Ann McKee, who leads the lab and signed the report. “I think these results should be a warning. We need to do more investigation.” Congress has been pushing the military in recent years to investigate whether the blasts from repeatedly firing heavy weapons cause brain damage, but the military has proceeded at a halting pace that has yielded few changes in the field.
Soldiers like Card are still being exposed to large numbers of blasts from grenades, mortars, cannons and rocket launchers in training every day. And current Pentagon guidelines say absorbing thousands of grenade blasts, as Card did over his career, poses no risks.
In a statement Wednesday, the Army said it had issued recommendations in recent months to reduce blast exposure in combat units. “The Army is committed to understanding, mitigating, accurately diagnosing and promptly treating blast overpressure and its effects in all forms,” the statement said. “While prolonged blast exposures can be potentially hazardous, even if encountered on the training range and not the battlefield, there is still a lot to learn.”
Card joined the Army Reserve in 2002, and for his first 12 years in the service he was a petroleum supply specialist. In 2014, he was transferred to 3rd Battalion, 304th Regiment, a training unit based in Saco, Maine.
Every summer, his platoon of the 3rd Battalion conducted a two-week field course for cadets from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, teaching them to use rifles, machine guns and shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons. Soldiers said that during the course, Card spent most of his time on the grenade range. Each of the 1,200 cadets had to throw at least one grenade; most threw two. Soldiers said over the years, Card could have easily been exposed to more than 10,000 blasts.
The Defense Department has a list of 14 weapons that in normal use, unleash a blast powerful enough to be potentially hazardous to the troops who use them. Grenades are not on the list. Soldiers in Card’s platoon said they received no briefings about the dangers of repeated exposure.