There were significant warning signs about Army Reserve member Robert Card before he ended up killing 18 people and injuring another 13 before taking his own life in Maine last week.
News broke this week that one member of Card’s unit in the Army Reserve sent multiple text messages about five weeks before the October 25 shooting that showed he was concerned about the man who eventually became a mass shooter.
The man wrote in one text:
“I believe he’s (Card) going to snap and do a mass shooting.”
That text also warned others to be armed if they see him.
The Sheriff’s Office in Sagadahoc County released that text along with a trove of other documents this week, including some letters from colleagues and friends of Card’s who all expressed concern about his mental state, which they said was rapidly deteriorating.
The sender of the texts, who was identified as Ssg Hodgson, wrote on September 15 to Corporal Kelvin Mote, who’s a police officer in Ellsworth:
“Change the passcode to the unit gate and be armed if sfc Card does arrive. I believe he’s messed up in the head. (sic) And threaten the unit … and other places.”
The texts continue:
“I love (Card) to death but i (sic) do not know how to help him and he refuses to get help or to continue help … I’m afraid he’s going to f**k up his life from hearing things he thinks he heard.”
Mote sent an email over to the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office that included those texts. They showed that Card was displaying confrontational and erratic behavior that seemed to be stemming from a form of paranoia.
In an email that Fox News Digital obtained, Mote wrote:
“Card has been hearing voices calling him a pedophile, saying he has a small d**k and other insults.”
Mote wrote that Card started hearing these voices back in the spring, and it “has only gotten worse.” That led to physical confrontations with some of his colleagues as well as “a longtime friend” of his.
Card was at West Point on July 15, and he allegedly accused some of the other soldiers there of saying he was a pedophile.” Mote wrote that he “said he would take care of it. Card got in his (longtime friend’s) face, shoved him and told him to stop calling him a pedophile.”
The exchange, which was reported as quite tense, was de-escalated temporarily, but then Card just kept repeating that “he would take care of it,” while he and others drove home.
Mote wrote in his email:
“Once they got back to the motel, Card locked himself in his room and would not answer the door when they tried to make contact.”
Mote and some other soldiers attempted to get Card to go see a psychologist the next day, but that just ended up sparking yet another tense exchange.
He was ultimately brought to the Four Winds Psychiatric Hospital in New York for evaluation and treatment, but he “never spoke, just stared through me without blinking,” Mote wrote in his email.
