Affidavits shed light on Card

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 sites.

Robert Card, 40, was found dead Friday, two days after a rampage that also wounded 13 people and shut down multiple communities during a massive manhunt.

Three hours after the shooting began, state police interviewed a woman who said 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 Card was 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.

His brother told police Card 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.

That man told police he had been to the bowling alley and bar with Card, and Card knew people at both locations. He said Card’s girlfriend had two daughters that he would take out to eat at Schemengees, “and that is where the pedophile thing in Robert’s head came from as Robert was there with (his girfriend’s) two daughters on occasions and felt that people were looking at him.”

The man said Card also mentioned bar manager Joey Walker was one of the people who Card thought disparaged him. Walker was among those killed.

Card’s son told police paranoia about strangers calling him a pedophile became a recurring theme for his father since last winter.

He also accused fellow members of his Army reserve unit of calling him a pedophile in July. He then spent two weeks at a private psychiatric hospital in New York.

In Lewiston, children were back in school and on the streets in costumes for trick-or-treating Tuesday after days of lockdown during the police search for Card.