A piece of the brain from the man who caused harm to many in Maine is being looked at more closely. The man, Robert Card, hurt many people, and now doctors want to check if his time in the Army Reserves caused any damage to his brain. This extra step is taken to understand if something from his military service could have made him act strangely before the event on October 25th when he harmed people at a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston.
The person in charge of checking these things, the state’s chief medical examiner, wants to find out if any injuries from Card’s time in the Army Reserves might have made him act in a way that was not normal. The medical examiner’s office believes that by doing these tests, they might get some answers about his behavior.
Card was found dead two days after he harmed people, and it was already concluded that he ended his own life. The samples from his brain were sent to a special lab in Boston, Massachusetts, which is known for studying problems related to brain injuries. This includes a condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which is often seen in football players who have had many head injuries. The lab cannot talk about the results without the family’s permission.
The concerns about Card’s brain come from his time in the Army Reserves, where he faced many blasts while teaching others about guns, anti-tank weapons, and grenades at West Point in New York. The Army is studying the link between these explosions and the effects on the brain, and they are working to reduce soldiers’ exposure to such blasts.
Card’s family and friends mentioned that he had started acting paranoid before being hospitalized last summer. During training at West Point, he believed that others were accusing him of terrible things. His fellow soldiers were worried, and they even restricted his access to weapons. Some of them were concerned about the possibility of a mass shooting.
Even though the people in charge knew about the worries from Card’s fellow soldiers, they couldn’t take away his guns because the laws in New York and Maine did not allow for it, even though he was going through a mental health crisis. Law enforcement had been told about these concerns, but when they tried to check on Card weeks before the event, he didn’t answer the door at his home.
