PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Army medical experts told a committee investigating a mass shooting by a reservist who suffered from a mental illness that reservists' health insurance is more limited than that of regular service members.
There are no Army hospitals in New England, and reservists generally aren't eligible for treatment at VA hospitals, so they're more likely to use private health care services, but those providers are prohibited from sharing information with the Army chain of command, said Col. Mark Ochoa, a medical officer with the U.S. Army Reserve Command, which oversees the mental health program.
Testimony said communication gaps could mean commanders, who are ultimately responsible for soldiers' safety and health, don't have a full picture of their overall health.
Ochoa did not provide details about the death of 40-year-old shooter Robert Card, who killed 18 people and wounded 13 others in Lewiston in October, but he did outline services available to soldiers and their families in crisis.
Despite the wide range of services offered, mental health programs can't mandate treatment for reservists — only commanders can do that — and Ochoa said there can be a breakdown in communication. Soldiers also sometimes hesitate to seek treatment for fear that having a record of mental health treatment will negatively impact their careers, he acknowledged.
“We hope we've been able to demonstrate to the public and to ourselves that this is a complex and intricate process,” committee chairman Daniel Wassen, a former state Supreme Court chief justice, said at the end of the session.
An independent commission appointed by the governor is investigating the facts surrounding the shooting at the bowling alley and bar and grill. Card's body was found two days after the shooting. An autopsy ruled it a suicide.
The gunman's family and fellow Army Reserve officers told police that Card had been becoming increasingly delusional in the months before the shooting. He had been hospitalized last summer after suffering a mental breakdown during a military training exercise in upstate New York. One reservist, Sean Hodgson, told a superior in September, weeks before the attack, that he thought he was going to lose his mind and become a mass shooter.
The state legislature then passed new gun control laws that strengthen Maine's “yellow flag” law, which makes it a crime to transfer a gun to someone prohibited from owning one, and expanded funding for mental health crisis care.
The commission is expected to release its final report this summer.
In its preliminary report, the commission criticized the police response to the confiscation of Card's weapons. The commission blamed police for placing the responsibility for the confiscation on Card's family, concluded that the police should have handled the matter, and stated that the police had the authority under the Yellow Flag Law to take him into protective custody.
Mental health experts say most people with mental illness are not violent and are far more likely to be victims of violent crimes than perpetrators, and that access to firearms is a big part of the problem.
David Sharpe, The Associated Press
