A fellow U.S. Army reservist interviewed by police about the Lewiston, Maine, mass shooter the month prior to the attack downplayed warnings about him, body camera recordings show.
The Sept. 16 footage, which captured audio but blurred the face of the reservist, identified in a private Maine lawyer’s report to a local sheriff’s office as Capt. Jeremy Reamer, was released Saturday by police in Saco, Maine, where the reserve base is located, following a Freedom of Information Act request filed by NBC News.
The officers, identified in that lawyer’s review of the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office as Saco Police Department officers Rodney Rossignol and Amber Damon, told Reamer that Robert Card, 40, may have wanted to open fire at the base and that they were on the lookout for two vehicle license plates connected to Card.
Law enforcement found Card’s body with a self-inflicted gunshot wound near the Androscoggin River in Lisbon Falls on Oct. 27, two days after he allegedly killed 18 people at two businesses in Lewiston. The attack is the deadliest mass shooting in Maine’s history.
Reamer told the two officers that Card “never made any specific threats” and that base officials at National Guard Base in Saco, where the bodycam recordings took place, were “not expecting him to be here.”
He also said the soldier who initially reported concerns about Card “is not the most credible.” But, in regards to Card, Reamer said, “He did say he would shoot places, but didn’t say here,” according to the recordings.
He said he spoke on the phone with Card the previous day, when Card expressed anger over those in his unit who reported his erratic behavior in the summer. The reporting prompted New York State Police to take him to Keller Army Community Hospital at the U.S. Military Academy for evaluation in July, a Defense Department official said.
The officers conducting the less than 5-minute interview asked the captain, identified in the report to…
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