Authorities in Maine issued a “statewide awareness alert” last month following threats made by Robert Card, the now-deceased U.S. Army reservist suspected of killing 18 people across two mass shootings in Maine earlier this week, two law enforcement chiefs told The Associated Press.
“We added extra patrols, we did that for about two weeks. ... The guy never showed up,” Saco police chief Jack Clements told the Associated Press.
Card had trained as an Army reservist in Saco and allegedly threatened to shoot up the National Guard Base where he had trained, Card’s sister-in-law Katie Card previously told The Daily Beast.
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Authorities reportedly issued the statewide alert in mid-September, urging officers to keep an eye out for Card after he made the threats, officials told the Associated Press.
Clements characterized the alert as a “generic thing that came out saying, hey, you know, we’ve had some report that this guy’s made some veiled threats,” and said the department receives many such alerts.
“Never came in contact with this guy, never received any phone calls from the reserve center saying, ‘Hey, we got somebody who was causing a problem,’” Clements told the Associated Press.
Sagadahoc County Sheriff Joel Merry said he sent the awareness alert to every state law enforcement agency after Card was not found during a wellness check at his home. “We couldn’t locate him,” Merry told the Associated Press.
Maine officials announced Friday that Card had been found dead after a frantic manhunt, later clarifying that he was discovered in the back of a large tractor-trailer in the parking lot of his ex-employer the Maine Recycling Corporation, and had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
