Police across Maine were alerted just last month to “veiled threats” by the U.S. Army reservist who would go on to carry out the worst mass shooting in the state’s history, one of a string of missed red flags that preceded the massacre.

Two local law enforcement chiefs told The Associated Press that a statewide awareness alert was sent in mid-September to be on the lookout for Robert Card after the firearms instructor made threats against his base and fellow soldiers. But after stepped-up patrols of the base and a visit to Card’s home – neither of which turned up any sign of him – they moved on.

“We added extra patrols, we did that for about two weeks. … The guy never showed up,” said Jack Clements, the police chief in Saco, home to the U.S. Army Reserve base where Card trained.

Sagadahoc County Sheriff Joel Merry, whose jurisdiction includes Card’s home in Bowdoin, said the Army Reserve tipped his department in September to the reservist’s threats, and the sheriff sent the awareness alert to every law enforcement agency in the state after his deputy came back empty-handed from a welfare check to Card’s home.

“We couldn’t locate him,” Merry said, adding that he couldn’t recall if there was any follow-up because “I don’t have any reports in front of me.”

Military officials declined to comment further about Card, specifically whether the threats relayed to the sheriff in September were new or the same ones Card had made during an Army reserve training exercise near West Point, New York, in July. That’s when police say Card was committed to a mental health facility for two weeks after acting erratically and “hearing voices and threats to shoot up” a military base.

Authorities say the 40-year-old Card opened fire with a high-powered rifle on a bowling alley and then a bar in Lewiston Wednesday night, killing 18 people and wounding 13 more. After an intensive two-day search that put the state on edge, Card was found dead Friday from a self-inflicted gunshot.

Despite the earlier threats, the FBI said Saturday Card had not been on its radar, telling AP it “did not have nor did it receive any tips or information concerning Robert Card.” The bureau added that its instant background check system “was not provided with or in possession of any information that would have prohibited Card from a lawful firearm purchase.”

Card’s case stands as a glaring example of missed red flags, with many unanswered questions about what the military, police, mental health professionals and relatives could have done to prevent the massacre.

While Maine does not have a red flag law, it does have a more limited “ yellow-flag ” law that would still allow police to petition a judge to take a person’s firearms away if a medical practitioner deems that person to be a threat.

For his part, Saco police Chief Clements defended his department’s response to the alert about Card, which he described as a “generic thing that came out saying, hey, you know, we’ve had some report that this guy’s made some veiled threats.”

Clements noted that his department gets many such alerts and that his officers gave this one its due attention, keeping an eye on the base for any sign of Card.

“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,’” he said. “We never got anything.”

Another law enforcement agency that came in contact with Card was the New York State Police, which on July 16 was called in West Point by commanders of the Army Reserve’s 3rd Battalion, 304th Infantry Regiment with concerns about Card’s erratic behavior and “threats to other members of his military unit” during a training exercise, according to a State Police document obtained by AP. State Police troopers took Card, a sergeant 1st class, to the Keller Army Community Hospital at West Point for what would be two weeks of mental health evaluation.

What New York State Police did about Card’s threats is unclear. The agency declined to comment to the AP on the case and did not respond to a request for reports or possible body-camera footage of their interactions with Card.

“This is an active investigation, and the New York State Police does not comment on active investigations, nor investigations in which we are not the lead agency,” it said in a statement Friday before Card was found dead. A state police spokesman refused to comment Saturday.

Jonathan Crisp, an army lawyer for two decades before starting a criminal defense practice, said when soldiers are committed involuntarily to mental health facilities by others in the chain of command, it is a “reportable” event under Army regulations that triggers a requirement to alert others. A provost marshal enters the incident into a military database that puts the FBI on notice so it can enter the name into a background list of people prevented from buying weapons.

“If they took him and he didn’t want to go and he refused to be admitted, it’s a slam dunk,” Crisp said. “This should have been reported.”

But Maine Department of Public Safety Commissioner Michael Sauschuck said in news conference Saturday that while Card had a history of mental illness, there was no evidence that he had ever been involuntarily committed.

“Just because there appears to be a mental health nexus to this scenario, the vast majority of people with mental health diagnosis will never hurt anybody,” Sauschuck said.

Jody Madeira, an Indiana University law professor who has studied gun laws, said police in one state can alert counterparts in another state that someone is a danger, and the military can do the same with local police.

She said someone dropped the ball because Card’s threats and medical evaluation should have triggered a yellow flag seizure of his guns when he returned home.

“He slipped through the cracks,” Madeira said. “There were warning signs.”

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Thousands of people broke into aid warehouses in Gaza to take flour and basic hygiene products, a U.N. agency said Sunday, in a mark of growing desperation and the breakdown of public order three weeks into the war between Israel and Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers.

Tanks and infantry pushed into Gaza over the weekend as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a “second stage” in the war, three weeks after Hamas launched a brutal incursion into Israel. The widening ground offensive came as Israel also pounded the territory from air, land and sea.

The bombardment — described by Gaza residents as the most intense of the war — knocked out most communications in the territory late Friday, largely cutting off the besieged enclave’s 2.3 million people from the world. Communications were restored to much of Gaza early Sunday.

The Israeli military said Sunday it had struck over 450 militant targets over the past 24 hours, including Hamas command centers, observation posts and anti-tank missile launching positions. It said more ground forces were sent into Gaza overnight.

Thomas White, Gaza for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said the warehouse break-ins were “a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down after three weeks of war and a tight siege on Gaza. People are scared, frustrated and desperate,” he said.

UNRWA provides basic services to hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza. Its schools across the territory have been transformed into packed shelters housing Palestinians displaced by the conflict. Israel has allowed only a small trickle of aid to enter from Egypt, some of which was stored in one of the warehouses that was broken into, UNRWA said.

Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the agency, said the crowds broke into four facilities on Saturday. She said the warehouses did not contain any fuel, which has been in critically short supply since Israel cut off all shipments after the start of the war.

Residents living near Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, meanwhile said Israeli airstrikes overnight hit near the hospital complex and blocked many roads leading to it. Israel accuses Hamas of having a secret command post beneath the hospital, without providing much evidence.

Tens of thousands of civilians are sheltering in Shifa, which is also packed with patients wounded in the strikes.

“Reaching the hospital has become increasingly difficult,” Mahmoud al-Sawah, who is sheltering in the hospital, said over the phone. “It seems they want to cut off the area.” Another Gaza City resident, Abdallah Sayed, said the Israeli bombing over the past two days was “the most violent and intense” since the war started.

The army recently released computer-generated images showing what it said were Hamas installations in and around Shifa Hospital, as well as interrogations of captured Hamas fighters who might have been speaking under duress. Israel has made similar claims before, but has not substantiated them.

Little is known about Hamas’ tunnels and other infrastructure, and the claims could not be independently verified. Hamas’ government denied the allegations and said they were aimed at justifying future strikes on the facility.

The Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said another Gaza City hospital received two calls from Israeli authorities on Sunday ordering it to evacuate. It said airstrikes have hit as close as 50 meters (yards) from the Al-Quds Hospital, where 12,000 people are sheltering.

Israel had ordered the hospital to evacuate more than a week ago, but it and other medical facilities have refused, saying it would mean death for patients on ventilators.

There was no immediate Israeli comment on the latest evacuation order or the strikes near Shifa.

Israel says most residents have heeded its orders to flee to the southern part of the besieged territory, but hundreds of thousands remain in the north, in part because Israel has also bombarded targets in so-called safe zones.

An Israeli airstrike hit a two-story house in the southern city of Khan Younis on Sunday, killing at least 13 people, including 10 from one family. The bodies were brought to the nearby Nasser Hospital, according to an Associated Press journalist at the scene.

The escalation has meanwhile ratcheted up domestic pressure on Israel’s government to secure the release of some 230 hostages seized in the Oct. 7 rampage, when Hamas fighters from Gaza breached Israel’s defenses and stormed into nearby towns, gunning down civilians and soldiers in a surprise attack.

Desperate family members met with Netanyahu on Saturday and expressed support for an exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

Hamas’ top leader in Gaza, Yehia Sinwar, said Palestinian militants “are ready immediately” to release all hostages if Israel releases all of the thousands of Palestinians held in its prisons. Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, dismissed the offer as “psychological terror.”

Netanyahu told the nationally televised news conference that Israel is determined to bring back all the hostages, and maintained that the expanding ground operation “will help us in this mission.” He said he couldn’t reveal everything that is being done due to the sensitivity and secrecy of the efforts.

“This is the second stage of the war, whose objectives are clear: to destroy the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas and bring the hostages home,” he said in his first time taking questions from journalists since the war began.

Netanyahu also acknowledged that the Oct. 7 “debacle,” in which more than 1,400 people were killed, would need a thorough investigation, adding that “everyone will have to answer questions, including me.”

The Israeli military said it was gradually expanding its ground operations inside Gaza, while stopping short of calling it an all-out invasion. Casualties on both sides are expected to rise sharply as Israeli forces and Palestinian militants battle in dense residential areas.

Despite the Israeli offensive, Palestinian militants have continued firing rockets into Israel, with the constant sirens in southern Israel a reminder of the threat.

The Palestinian death toll in Gaza rose Saturday to just over 7,700 people since the war began, with 377 deaths reported since late Friday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Most of those killed have been women and minors, the ministry said.

An estimated 1,700 people remain trapped beneath the rubble, according to the Health Ministry, which has said it bases its estimates on distress calls it received.

Israel says its strikes target Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that the militants operate among civilians, putting them in danger.

More than 1.4 million people across Gaza have fled their homes, nearly half crowding into U.N. schools and shelters, following repeated warnings by the Israeli military that they would be in danger if they remained in northern Gaza.

Gaza’s sole power plant shut down shortly after the start of the war, and Israel has allowed no fuel to enter, saying Hamas would use it for military purposes.

Hospitals are struggling to keep emergency generators running to operate incubators and other life-saving equipment, and the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees is also trying to keep water pumps and bakeries running to meet essential needs.

When he was young, historian and author Justin Brink would make his dad, Kevin, drive him up and down the streets of Forest Lake in the family’s 1989 Chevy Celebrity on self-directed history tours.

“I had a dime-store camera, and I would take pictures of buildings and street intersections,” Brink said. “We even stopped traffic at a main intersection once — just so I could get the right shot. I was a strange kid.”

Brink recently published his first book, “Images of America: Forest Lake.” The 128-page book is packed with photos and stories curated by Brink, the president of the Forest Lake Historical Society.

One early settler featured in the book is Swiss immigrant Gotthard Rahm, who arrived in Forest Lake around 1875 and served as the town’s election clerk, treasurer and supervisor. He and his wife, Marie, had three children, and they lived on about 150 acres that abutted the northwest corner of First Lake and included the outlet of the Sunrise River. Sadly, the family’s time in Forest Lake was marked by tragedy.

Justin Brink, president of the Forest Lake Historical Society, recently wrote his first book. “Images of America: Forest Lake,” was released by Arcadia Publishing in September 2023. (Courtesy of Justin Brink)

“In 1879, Gotthard broke through the ice and lost his team of horses,” Brink writes in the book. “Several years later, his son survived a stabbing, and two other children nearly drowned in the lake. In 1896, son Adolph drowned in the Ohio River. Overwhelmed by grief, Gotthard died the following spring by suicide, stabbing himself multiple times in the chest.”

In November 1887, a skeleton — believed to have been a farmhand who had gone missing four months earlier — was discovered in a thicket on the Rahms’ farm, according to Brink. “He was subject to fits, and it is thought died while suffering from one of his attacks,” he said.

Brink also writes about the history of the Forest Lake State Bank, which was founded by Orlando and Wayne Struble in 1903. The street outside the bank was illuminated “by kerosene lamps that were lit nightly and extinguished each morning by the night marshall,” Brink writes.

One photo included in the book, courtesy of the Washington County Historical Society, shows bank customer Nellie Banta posing for a photograph before conducting business.

“At the center window is Orlando Struble, and the cashier at right is Harlan W. Swanson,” Brink writes. “A sign to the left of the window reads, ‘Honor thy Father and Mother, but not the stranger’s checks.’”

Brink shared several pages of his book on the “Old Forest Lake” Facebook page prior to publication. One post detailed the closing of Houle’s Feed Mill, a local landmark, and its subsequent purchase and restoration to become Spike’s and Houle’s Feed, Seed & Pet Supply.

Alexander Brand, fifth generation of the Houle family, and James Houle, third generation, walk to the warehouse at Houle’s Feed Mill in Forest Lake on Jan. 10, 2019. (Jean Pieri / Pioneer Press)

“Houle’s has been a staple of the community since the early 1900s,” Brink said. “When there was talk about it being acquired and demolished for a new hotel, there was a lot of uproar about that. That turned out not to be the case, thankfully, and that’s when Spike’s acquired it. The community has been very happy about the renovation just because so much history has been lost over the years that finally we have a building that is being saved.”

Living in a historic home

Brink, 42, was born in Chisago City and raised in Forest Lake. He graduated from Forest Lake Area High School in 1999. He is a registered nurse and works as an infection/safety coordinator at Summit Orthopedics.

He and his wife, Jennifer, and their four children live in a house that is featured in the book. It was the site of Forest Lake’s first hospital.

“Dr. George Ruggles opened his first clinic office in 1932 in downtown Forest Lake,” Brink writes in the book. “Drafted into service during World War II in 1942, he set his sights on bigger things when he returned home in 1945. The following year, he purchased an old farmhouse and turned it into Forest Lake’s first hospital. It opened in 1948 and continued to serve the community until its closing in 1962.”

Prior to becoming a hospital, the house at 107 South Shore Drive “was a dairy farm owned by a wealthy family from St. Paul,” Brink writes. “It was then sold in 1911 to Charles Beard, a real estate salesman. When he died in 1945, it gave Dr. Ruggles the opportunity to purchase the property in 1946.”

“Images of America: Forest Lake” includes images collected from the Forest Lake Historical Society, the Washington County Historical Society, and the community.

“Images of America: Forest Lake” was released by Arcadia Publishing in September. (Courtesy of Justin Brink)

The book “fills a need to show off Forest Lake’s deep history,” said Brent Peterson, executive director of the Washington County Historical Society. “It is full of never-before-seen photos and stories of old Forest Lake.”

Brink’s book is the second written about the history of Forest Lake. Historian Elsie Vogel wrote “Reflections of Forest Lake,” which was published in 1993 for the town’s centennial. The Forest Lake Historical Society plans to reprint the book in 2024, Brink said.

Brink did not have space to include many photos from the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s, he said, so he is already planning to write a second book. “People love the book, but there is a lot of interest in seeing photos from those decades,” he said.

Hopkins Schoolhouse

Brink, who serves on the city’s planning commission, also has been working to save the Hopkins Schoolhouse in Hugo. The one-room schoolhouse, built in 1928, sat empty for more than two decades. Brink and a group of volunteers have been working to raise money to restore the building.

Located off of 170th Street North and U.S. Highway 61, the schoolhouse served students in grades 1 through 8 until the mid-1940s and grades 1 through 6 until it closed in 1962. In 1965, Oneka Township purchased the property for $3,500 from the Forest Lake school district for use as a Town Hall. Seven years later, Oneka Township was incorporated into the Village of Hugo, and the city of Hugo was created.

The Hopkins Schoolhouse was briefly used as a youth center and a meeting place for the Hugo Boy Scouts, but has been vacant since the early 2000s.

“The roof was just completed, the chimney just repaired, and the soffit was repaired, so we are all set for the winter,” Brink said. “That was all phase 1.”

Members of the Hopkins Schoolhouse committee check out the interior of the building March 25, 2022, in Hugo. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

The group will be raising money this winter to pay for the second phase, which includes new siding.

The hoped-for completion date for the Hopkins Schoolhouse and Heritage Center is 2028, the centennial of the opening of the school, Brink said.

In the future, the building will be used in a number of ways, including as a rest area for users of the Hardwood Creek Regional Trail, as a site for historical displays and programming by the Forest Lake Historical Society and Hugo Historical Commission, and as an interactive learning center for area grade-school students, Brink said.

“It also will be a new meeting place for community members to gather,” he said. “We want to honor the heritage of Hugo, Forest Lake and the surrounding area by highlighting historic examples of citizens who made a difference in the community.”

‘Images of America: Forest Lake’ book launch

A book launch for “Images of America: Forest Lake” by Forest Lake historian and author Justin Brink will be at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 1, at the Washington County Heritage Center in Stillwater. The program is free to the public; no reservations are required. A Zoom link may be accessed at wchsmn.org/event/brink.

For more information, contact Washington County Heritage Center Site Manager Emily Krawczewski at emily.krawczewski@wchsmn.org or 651-439-2298.

To purchase a copy of the book, go to forestlakehistory.org/book.

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