Maine State Police documents released Tuesday shed light on why a delusional U.S. Army reservist who killed 18 people at a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston may have targeted those locations.
State police interviewed a woman three hours after the shooting who said 40-year-old Robert Card believed the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley, Schemengees Bar and Grille and several other businesses were “broadcasting online that Robert was a pedophile.”
The woman said the shooter, who was found dead Friday, had been delusional since February after a break-up, had been hospitalized for mental illness and prescribed medication that he stopped taking, according to a police affidavit filed in support of a request for an arrest warrant.
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Police also spoke to the gunman's brother, who said he had been in relationship with someone he met at a cornhole competition at the bar. Another man said the same thing to a different officer, according to an affidavit filed in a request to access the shooter's cell phone records.
That man told police he had been to both the bowling alley and bar with the shooter, and that the gunman knew people at both locations. He said the shooter's girlfriend had two daughters that he would take out to eat at Schemengees, “and that is where the pedophile thing in [his] head came from as [he] was there with (his girfriend’s) two daughters on occasions and felt that people were looking at him.”
The man said the shooter also mentioned bar manager Joey Walker was one of the people who he thought had disparaged him. Walker was among those killed.
Members of the shooter's Army reserve unit also have told authorities that he accused fellow soldiers of calling him a pedophile.
