{"id":33453,"date":"2024-10-15T03:21:52","date_gmt":"2024-10-15T08:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=33453"},"modified":"2024-10-31T22:38:25","modified_gmt":"2024-11-01T03:38:25","slug":"100-lewiston-mass-shooting-survivors-and-victims-families-claim-u-s-military-negligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=33453","title":{"rendered":"100 Lewiston mass shooting survivors and victims’ families claim U.S. military negligence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One year after an Army reservist perpetrated a mass shooting across Lewiston, Maine,<\/a> lawyers representing survivors and families of the victims said Tuesday they are pursuing negligence claims against the federal government that could pave the way for 100 individual lawsuits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The claimants are serving legal notices of their intent to sue the Defense Department, the Army and Keller Army Community Hospital in West Point, New York, alleging they failed to respond to warning signs and threats the gunman, Robert Card, made in the months before he killed 18 people at a bowling alley<\/a> and a bar<\/a> on Oct. 25.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cToday marks the first step toward ensuring accountability and justice for the families and victims of the worst mass shooting in Maine history,\u201d lawyer Benjamin Gideon of Gideon Asen LLC said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the firms, National Trial Law in Texas, helped survivors and families of those killed in a 2017 church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas,<\/a> committed by an Air Force service member. The federal government was found partly liable in that case, and the survivors agreed to settle<\/a> last year after the Justice Department appealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The legal cases in Maine are similarly focused on the federal government and actions taken by military members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The law firms said that the U.S. has six months to investigate and evaluate the claims and that if it denies them or declines to act \u2014 whichever comes first \u2014 the claimants can proceed with lawsuits in federal court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf the U.S. chooses to run out the clock by sitting on our claims without acting, we will file our action six months and one day from today,\u201d Gideon added. \u201cWe are committed to moving forward and ensuring accountability and justice for our clients.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Key reports released in recent months have shed light on possible missteps by the military, law enforcement officers and hospital staff members and how the shooting might have been averted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gunman, 40, was found dead by suicide after a two-day manhunt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An internal military report in July investigating the Army\u2019s response laid out how Card\u2019s unit failed to follow certain procedures<\/a> after he was involved in a shoving incident with another reservist in July 2023, leading him to be hospitalized in a psychiatric unit at a civilian hospital for two weeks. At the time, his reported symptoms included psychosis and homicidal ideations, and he had created a \u201chit list,\u201d according to the military\u2019s investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Army then prohibited Card from having access to weapons on duty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A separate independent report released by a state commission<\/a> in August concluded that while the gunman was solely responsible for his conduct, other lapses played roles, among them that leaders of Card\u2019s unit \u201cfailed to undertake necessary steps to reduce the threat he posed to the public,\u201d such as ignoring \u201cstrong recommendations\u201d from his mental health providers to stay engaged with his care and ensure any weapons in his home were removed. The commission also found that his unit \u201cneglected to share\u201d all the information it knew about past threats he made with the local sheriff\u2019s office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, according to the commission, medical staff members at Keller Army Community Hospital, where Card was initially evaluated last year, failed to file a so-called SAFE Act notice. The report is used to alert authorities when people may be dangers to themselves or others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The military and independent commission reports also detailed how Card\u2019s family alerted a Sagadahoc County sheriff\u2019s sergeant about his deteriorating mental health<\/a>. The report further said that law enforcement agencies had probable cause to initiate Maine\u2019s \u201cyellow flag\u201d law<\/a>, which allows them to confiscate people’s firearms if they are believed to be threats to themselves or others, but that that was never done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sagadahoc County Sheriff Joel Merry said after the shooting that the Army Reserve did inform his department about Card\u2019s making threats<\/a> to \u201cshoot up\u201d the National Guard base in Saco, Maine. Merry said he sent a statewide alert to law enforcement agencies after he sent deputies to Card\u2019s home in Bowdoin, near Lewiston, but they could not find him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also under scrutiny has been whether Card\u2019s years of being exposed to low-level blasts<\/a> as a hand grenade instructor in the military were tied to the \u201csevere\u201d traumatic brain injury that researchers found evidence of<\/a> this year. The military denied in its report that any brain-related injury was linked to his service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The claimants\u2019 notices allege that Card \u201cnever received the services and help that he needed\u201d and that he was \u201creleased back into the community without a plan to address the ongoing risks he presented to the community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The military did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the negligence claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the apparent warning signs, a definitive motive for the massacre remains unclear. Card\u2019s family has said that he claimed to have been hearing voices<\/a> months before when he was fitted for high-powered hearing aids and that he had grown increasingly paranoid<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cynthia Young<\/a>, whose husband, William, and son, Aaron, 14, were killed at the bowling alley, won access in court this month to Card\u2019s mental health and other records as part of her effort to find out why the shooting occurred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs terrible as the shooting was it\u2019s even more tragic that there were many opportunities to prevent this,\u201d Young said in a statement provided by her lawyer, \u201cand they were not taken.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nbcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One year after an Army reservist perpetrated a mass shooting across Lewiston, Maine, lawyers representing survivors and families of the victims said Tuesday they are pursuing negligence claims against the federal government that could pave the way for 100 individual lawsuits. The claimants are serving legal notices of their intent to sue the Defense Department, the Army […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":33454,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[1231,23686,5507,3413,30826],"class_list":["post-33453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-claims","tag-lewiston","tag-mass-shooting","tag-survivors","tag-victims-families"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33455,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33453\/revisions\/33455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}