The Next Clue Over Maine Shooting: Gunman's Brain

Late Robert Card's organ sent to Boston CTE Center to see if there were injuries from blasts
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 12, 2023 9:17 AM CST
Maine Shooter's Brain Sent to CTE Center
Recent snowfall coats crosses on Dec. 5 at one of several memorials for the victims of the October mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine.   (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Since October's mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, that left 18 dead and injured more than a dozen others, investigators have been trying to piece together what led gunman Robert Card to carry out such a violent act. Now, Card's brain is being sent to Boston's CTE Center, where it will be examined to see if he suffered any brain injury or trauma while serving in the Army Reserve, reports CBS News. Card, a 40-year-old petroleum supply specialist who cops say later died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, had been a member of the reserve for more than two decades when he started "behaving erratically" in July of this year, according to base leaders at Camp Smith in upstate New York.

Card was committed for two weeks at a mental health facility after claiming he was hearing voices and reportedly threatened to open fire at a military base in Saco, Maine. "In an event such as this, people are left with more questions than answers," Lindsey Chasteen, office administrator for the Maine medical examiner's office, says in a statement. "It is our belief that if we can conduct testing ... that may shed light on some of those answers, we have a responsibility to do that." The AP notes that the analysis of Card's brain is due to "exposure to repeated blasts while training US Military Academy cadets about guns, [anti-tank weapons], and grenades at West Point."

Per the New York Times, the CTE center at Boston University where Card's brain has been sent "has the nation's largest brain bank focused on chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain condition thought to be tied to repeated head hits. The paper also notes that the Pentagon has, over the last few years, begun "trying to track, study, and understand the impact of blast exposure" from taking part in such activities as grenade throwing.

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Some soldiers in Card's 3rd Battalion, 304th Regiment unit, which he joined in 2014, say he may have seen upward of 10,000 blasts; he wore a hearing aid in his last year of life. Although the US military does test veterans for brain injuries when they return from war zones, they don't test instructors like Card on training ranges—"even though they may be exposed to far more blasts than troops in war zones are," per the Times. Results from tests on Card's brain may not be in for six to eight months. (More Robert Card stories.)

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