Big News In Maine Mass Killing Case

LEWISTON, Maine – Big news on the Robert Card case.  After fatally shooting 18 people, 40-year-old Robert Card was hunted down by authorities and found dead days later.  

Interestingly enough, Maine’s Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Mark Flomenbaum, shipped Robert Card’s brain to Boston University’s CTE center for further investigation. The investigation of Card’s brain has revealed “significant evidence of traumatic brain injuries at the time of the shootings.”  Wow. That’s interesting. This crazed shooter actually was suffering from a real medical condition.   

There were no findings disclosed about the medical “condition” Card suffered from according to Maine’s Chief Medical Examiner’s office that also prohibited the CME from determining the time of death.  Remember this undisclosed medical condition would be described by the Medical Examiner as being associated with all the blood draining from Card’s heart making it impossible to determine the time of death.

So, it’s more detailed. According to the Associated Press, “among the injuries recorded by researchers were damage to the fibers that allow communication between areas of the brain, inflammation, and a small blood vessel injury, according to the report signed by Dr. Ann McKee, director of the lab at Boston University, and released Wednesday. She said there was no evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disease often found in athletes and military veterans who have suffered repetitive head trauma.” 

Okay, so did someone screw up when Card was seen by the military and then a private hospital and misdiagnose him? Did he actually suffer from a serious medical condition, a neurological problem, because of his job in the military, which was working with explosives? 

Recall that Card was treated by an unnamed psychologist in the Military via Tricare that referred the service man to a private Psychiatric Hospital in Katonah, New York, Four Winds Psychiatry Hospital.  The treating psychiatrist’s name is also being withheld from the public.  This is serious business. If his diagnosing physicians failed to consider a medical condition, including conducting brain scans, and jumped immediately to a psychiatric diagnosis and massive drugging, then somebody’s got some splainin to do! 

The liability for the misdiagnosis of Robert Card would typically fall on the healthcare provider or hospital responsible for his care. In cases of medical malpractice, hospitals can be held liable if their employees, or those appearing as employees, make medical errors or omissions that deviate from professional standards.  If the healthcare provider who caused the malpractice was an employee of the hospital, the hospital may be legally responsible for errors made by that individual under the legal theory of respondeat superior.  It’s anybody’s guess what Card’s family will do with this information.  

In the meantime, the Governor of Maine formed a “fact finding committee” that was heavy on bias and conflicts of interest that failed to reach any conclusions.  In addition, a law firm has served multiple agencies with a letter to retain their records, yet the public has heard little on this aspect of the case.

None of these facts stopped the Governor from proposing an increase in mental health spending in the amount of $17.5 million. The proposed bill spending is part of a bill sponsored by House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, that would install and build crisis receiving centers, establish an Office of Violence Prevention, expand mobile crisis response teams, and mandate gun dealers to distribute suicide prevention materials as well as other gun control measures.

Based on this most recent finding, one might argue that there still are more questions that need to be answered. Perhaps his family will step in and demand answers. Obviously, something was very wrong with Card in the last few years of his life. His violent behavior was out of character. Could it really have been a psychiatric drug cocktail prescribed to him that made him violent? We’ll never know until someone releases the list of mind-altering drugs Card was prescribed.  C’mon, let’s get to the bottom of this.