One law might have taken Robert Card's guns before mass shooting. Officers didn't use it.

In Robert Card's hometown in Maine, law enforcement officers heard repeated warnings about him from relatives and fellow soldiers, yet they never took the one step experts say could have separated Card from his guns before he committed the deadliest mass shooting in state history.  

Detaining him under Maine’s “yellow flag” law would have allowed police to order a psychiatric assessment. That, in turn, would have opened the door to asking a judge to ban Card from possessing firearms.   

Sagadahoc County Sheriff Joel Merry told USA TODAY that deputies could not have begun those proceedings without first taking Card into custody. 

But experts – and one of the law’s authors – say Maine’s law should have led them to do exactly that. 

“This is exactly what the yellow flag law was designed for,” said Michael Carpenter, a former Maine attorney general and former member of the Maine Senate who helped create the law in 2019. “If this law is implemented and the people who are supposed to do so do their job, it easily could have prevented this tragedy.” 

Records released this week by the sheriff's office show repeated warnings about Card's mental condition and a firsthand account of him threatening to commit a mass shooting. 

More:Deputies were warned Robert Card had guns, threatened a shooting, was 'going to snap'

In May, Card’s ex-wife and son contacted the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office and told a deputy that Card was drinking heavily, acting paranoid and had recently picked up 10 to 15 rifles and handguns. They were so worried about approaching him that they talked about remaining anonymous in the police report. 

In July, the U.S. Army Reserve was so concerned about Card’s erratic behavior on an out-of-state trip that they called police, who took him to a psychiatric hospital where he was treated for two weeks. Card’s superiors banned Card from handling weapons or ammunition at his home base in Maine. They tried to persuade him to retire from the reserve and seek psychiatric help. Then they wrote a letter to Card’s local sheriff that included a fellow soldier’s worry: “Card is going to snap and commit a mass shooting.” 

Maine law specifically authorizes police to take someone into custody if they have reason to believe that person may be mentally ill and pose a likelihood of serious harm. For probable cause, police may rely on “recent personal observations or conversations” with another person. 

Yet in September, when deputies went looking for Card, they never actually contacted him, their records show. They searched for him once and found he wasn’t at home. They issued a statewide bulletin to other agencies to help find him. 

Finally, deputies knocked on the door of his trailer a second time. They heard him moving around inside, but he would not answer the door. In the end, they drove away.

Maine’s unique yellow flag law

“Extreme risk” laws, commonly known as “red flag” laws, exist in 21 states. Some states allow concerned family members to make a complaint directly to a judge to start the process of having somebody’s guns confiscated. In other states, that procedure can be initiated by law enforcement applying directly to a judge for an order. 

Under Maine’s unique yellow flag law, which was created with the cooperation of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine – a group that represents sport shooters and hunters – the process is more complicated. 

A law enforcement officer must first initiate a professional mental health assessment of the person they’re concerned about, said Margaret Groban, a former U.S. attorney and a professor at the University of Maine who teaches firearms law. The officer then takes that assessment to a judge, who can sign off on an order to separate the person from any firearms and, if necessary, have the person involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital.

That never happened in Card’s case. 

Since 2020, the yellow flag law has been used 81 times, but a flag was never issued for Card, a spokesperson for the Maine Attorney General’s Office confirmed to USA TODAY. The spokesperson said the Maine Chiefs of Police Association conducted training on the law earlier this year. 

“All deputies were required to do an online training on the weapons restriction law,” the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office told USA TODAY. 

A statement released by the sheriff’s office Monday night expressed sympathy for the lives lost in the shooting:

“My office will evaluate our policies and procedures for how we conduct wellness checks with the goal of making any improvements that are in the interest of public safety while balancing the rights of individuals,” the statement reads. “Our hearts are breaking for the families and friends of the people who were killed and injured.”

Concerns about shooting threats can also be reported at the federal level. But the FBI told USA TODAY it had no record of complaints being made about Card to the National Threat Operations Center. 

“Likewise, the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) was not provided with or in possession of any information that would have prohibited Card from a lawful firearm purchase," the FBI’s statement reads.

Dan Mears, a professor of criminology at Florida State University, said the Card case “feels like one of the cases where there’s a system to blame ... where there’s no one clearly responsible for doing the common-sense thing.”

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A direct threat of a mass shooting 

Records released Monday by the Sagadahoc Sheriff’s Office don’t indicate anyone even considered pursuing a yellow flag case for Card despite months of concerns.  

In May, Card’s ex-wife and son told a deputy that Card’s family were aware of his deteriorating mental health, according to one report. But “their efforts have been in vain because Robert is in denial,” the report says. 

The deputy discussed how to tackle the situation with the family. They agreed Card’s former wife would reach out to his sister-in-law who is a nurse “and a trusted friend.” His family would get him help, a deputy wrote. 

The local authorities also were willing to ask someone else to intervene: the Army Reserves, where Card had served since 2002. 

A deputy explained the situation to Card’s Reserve unit, writing that a sergeant “thanked me for the notification because they are scheduled for an upcoming training exercise involving … weapons and grenades.”  Card’s commanders promised to sit down with him and “see if they could get him to open up about what has been going on,” according to the report. 

But the Army had sway over Card, a reservist, only during its events and weekend trainings. 

In July, while Card was attending training in West Point, his Army Reserve unit summoned the New York State Police, who took him to a psychiatric hospital where he remained for two weeks. 

The New York State Police declined to answer questions about its handling of the case, citing the ongoing investigation into the shooting in Maine, so it’s unclear whether officers there ever contacted anyone in Maine law enforcement. 

Jody Madeira, a law professor at Indiana University who has studied gun policy, told USA TODAY that “no one really knows how these yellow flag laws work,” especially when there’s a multistate component.

She said stringent legislation like red flag laws are more effective because they set precise criteria by which people are deemed a potential threat to themselves or others. “If there’s no set pipeline that people can go through by statute, then that creates a situation where there's a vacuum of responsibility and there's no ownership of the problem,” she said.

Another warning, but no police contact 

After his hospital stay, Card’s Reserve commanders ordered that he not handle weapons or ammunition. But an Army spokesman said their orders affected only Card’s time in Reserve activities, and he missed his unit’s assemblies for the next two months.

By September, the Sagadahoc Sheriff’s Office received another, even starker, warning about Card’s disturbing behavior. 

A letter to the department from Card’s Army Reserve command outlined how Card’s fellow soldiers said they had been driving home from a night at a casino when Card again began ranting and punched another colleague.

Card was “having psychotic episodes where he is hearing voices that are insulting him calling him a pedophile,” a commander wrote in a letter to the sheriff’s office, adding that Card was “making threats to shoot up the Saco National Guard facility” in nearby Saco, Maine.     

The letter said Card was upset at his command because the mental health commitment “was the reason he can't buy guns anymore,” and that a fellow soldier – the one Card had punched – “is concerned that Card is going to snap and commit a mass shooting.” 

The Army Reserve asked the sheriff’s department to conduct a welfare check on Card. 

“I would rather err on the side of caution with regards to Card,” the letter writer added, “since he is a capable marksman and, if he should set his mind to carry out the threats … he would be able to do it.”

On Sept. 15, deputies tried to contact Card at the trailer where he lived in the small town of Bowdoin. Nobody was home and Card’s car wasn’t there, so the officer requested a “File 6” – a teletype alert to every law enforcement agency in Maine to be on the lookout for Card. 

According to a statement from the sheriff’s office, that alert said Card was known to be armed and dangerous and urged extreme caution.  

A deputy returned the next day, Sept. 16, and found Card’s white Subaru parked outside his trailer. He called for backup.   

“Card could be heard moving around inside the trailer but would not answer the door,” the report states. “Due to being in a very disadvantageous position we decided to back away.”

This is the point where deputies could − and should − have used Maine’s yellow flag law, Carpenter said. 

The Sheriff’s Department should have continued to attempt to contact Card, he said, and after taking him into custody, should have sought a psychiatric assessment of him. If necessary, officers should have sought a search warrant, then arrested him if he refused to cooperate, he said.  

“What should have happened at that point is they take everything they’ve got and they go to a medical professional and get an assessment,” Carpenter said. 

Deputies should then have taken the assessment to a judge, who likely would have immediately issued an order declaring Card a “restricted person” − like a convicted felon − who is not allowed to possess a firearm, Carpenter said. 

But they didn’t. 

Sagadahoc County Sheriff Merry, in an email to USA TODAY, said his deputy “was not able to take Mr. Card into protective custody or do an assessment on him, as required. He would have had to have direct contact with Mr. Card, and unfortunately, that did not happen.”

Instead, the deputies who heard Card inside his home called Card’s commander at the Army Reserve yet again. 

“He thought it best to let Card have time with himself for a bit,” the report says.

A little more than month later, Card opened fire at the Just-in-Time Recreation bowling alley during a youth league event before moving on to the Schemengees Bar & Grille Restaurant. 

As a regionwide manhunt grew, police directed people to stay inside and lock their doors while officers searched for a suspect named Robert Card. They described him much the same way he had been described in their previous reports, as “armed and dangerous.”

Contributing: Tom Vanden Brook