Robert Card

Robert R. Card II (April 4, 1983 – October 27, 2023) was a longtime resident of Bowdoin, Maine.[42][43] He was identified by the police on October 25, initially as a person of interest,[44][45][46] and later designated as a suspect the next day.[47] He was a sergeant first class in the United States Army Reserve and enlisted in December 2002.[48][49] An Army spokesperson confirmed that Card was a member of the reserves but had no active deployments.[50] Card was formerly a student at Bowdoin Central School and later Mount Ararat High School in nearby Topsham.[51][52] After graduating in 2001, he studied engineering at the University of Maine from 2001 to 2004 but did not complete his education.[53] His only recorded interactions with law enforcement prior to 2023 were a 2007 DUI arrest, which he pleaded guilty to, and two speeding charges in 2001 and 2002.[54][55] In July 2023, service members who were training alongside Card at West Point reported that he was behaving erratically and requested that law enforcement intervene. Card had complained of hearing voices and threatened to "shoot up" a military base in Saco. The New York State Police responded to the report and transported him to the Keller Army Community Hospital at the academy,[56] where he was committed for two weeks for medical evaluation.[57][11] Card's sister-in-law informed NBC News that he had started hearing voices around the time he was fitted for hearing aids. She mentioned that he "was picking up voices that he had never heard. His mind was twisting them around. He was humiliated by the things that he thought were being said."[58] Card had used Twitter to like and retweet far-right extremist views, including transphobic views by right-wing figures like Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr.,[59][60][61] as well as Twitter's owner Elon Musk.[62]