A U.S. Army psychological well being knowledgeable informed Lewiston capturing fee members Thursday that reservists accountable for Robert Card didn’t need to comply with the identical protocol for follow-up care as those that supervise active-duty army personnel.
However Col. Mark Ochoa, a physician stationed at Fort Liberty in North Carolina (previously Fort Bragg) concerned within the Army’s psychological well being program, additionally acknowledged beneath questioning that Card’s commanders finally had the duty for guaranteeing he was being handled correctly.
“We’re there to assist commanders the very best we will,” he mentioned. “I do not prefer to suppose they’re on their very own.”
Card, who shot and killed 18 folks at two capturing places in Lewiston on Oct. 25, 2003, had been struggling along with his psychological well being for a lot of months. In July, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in New York on the urging of his supervisors, however he was discharged after two weeks and his personal supervisor, Capt. Jeremey Reamer, acknowledged to fee members in April that not sufficient was achieved to make sure Card was getting follow-up care.
Ochoa was the one participant in Thursday’s fee assembly, the newest in a sequence of public periods with the aim of investigating the deadliest capturing in state historical past.
Prior fee conferences have featured testimony from law enforcement officials concerned in investigating Card’s habits earlier than the capturing, fellow members of Card’s Saco-based Army Reserve unit, relations of victims, and, extra just lately, members of Card’s family.
A number of the testimony, from those that watched Card’s psychological well being deteriorate earlier than led to Maine’s worst mass capturing, has been heart-wrenching.
Ochoa was in a roundabout way concerned in Card’s care, and he was not requested questions on Card or his care. As an alternative, he was requested to clarify extra broadly how the Army offers psychological well being assets and referrals for its members. He acknowledged there may be gaps in communication between the Army’s psychological well being program and particular models and members.
“We solely know what we all know,” he mentioned on a couple of event.
Ochoa defined that there are variations in how active-duty members and reservists are handled.
The largest problem, he mentioned, in bringing psychological well being care to reservists is that they’re largely part-time volunteer troopers who scatter when not coaching collectively.
Fee member Debra Baeder, former chief forensic psychologist for the State of Maine, requested Ochoa if the military’s psychological program had any skill to mandate {that a} reservist get therapy.
“No, not for reservists,” he mentioned. That must come from commanders.
Baeder additionally requested Ochoa if there are considerations amongst reserve officers and their supervisors about making psychological well being referrals as a result of it would create a adverse profile for particular members.
“In fact that hinders folks,” he mentioned, earlier than including, “however a medical situation must be handled as such.”
An interim report issued in March concluded that regulation enforcement did not take Card into protecting custody and seize his firearms within the weeks earlier than the mass capturing.
The 30-page report known as a Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Workplace deputy’s failure to take Robert Card into custody in mid-September “an abdication of regulation enforcement’s duty.”
One officer who was singled out, Sgt. Aaron Skolfield of the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s, has since disputed facets of that interim report as “inaccurate and intensely deceptive,” and tried to shift duty to Card’s Army colleagues. Skolfield, by the way, is operating for sheriff this 12 months.
Fee members haven’t spared Army officers from blame, although, and Thursday’s assembly hinted at a few of that.
Ochoa repeatedly responded to questions that reservists merely do not have the identical entry to companies and if or once they obtain care in a civilian setting, that is not at all times communicated again to army personnel.
Already, Card’s supervisor, Capt. Reamer, has acknowledged that he might have achieved extra to make sure Card was getting assist following his launch from the hospital final summer time.
However Reamer nonetheless shifted blame elsewhere.
“You possibly can lead a horse to water, however you’ll be able to’t make him drink it,” mentioned Reamer, who can be a police officer in Nashua, New Hampshire. “Finally, his psychological well being comes all the way down to him.”
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