The independent commission added in its final report that police officers should have undergone steps to seize Robert Card’s firearms through Maine’s yellow flag law.

PORSMOUTH, N.H. — Army Reserve and law enforcement officials failed to take several opportunities that could have prevented the Lewiston, Maine, mass shootings last year, an independent commission tasked with investigating the tragedy said in its final report Tuesday.

The commission, formed last year by Maine Gov. Janet Mills, was comprised of several attorneys, a forensic psychologist, and a psychiatrist who released its final report Tuesday about the October 2023 mass shootings in Lewiston, Maine, that left 18 people dead. In the report, the commission said that while the actions of the shooter, Robert Card, were his own, his Army reserve unit and local law enforcement missed opportunities to intervene after several concerns about Card’s behavior were raised.

Daniel Wathen, a retired Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court and the commission’s chair, spoke on behalf of the group during the news conference Tuesday. He said the commission was only tasked with investigating the facts of the shootings, not making recommendations, adding that it is impossible to know whether the shootings would have been prevented if officials had properly intervened.

The report said authorities “failed to undertake necessary steps to reduce the threat he posed to the public.” The independent commission added in its final report that police officers should have undergone steps to seize Card’s firearms through Maine’s yellow flag law.

Maine’s yellow flag law allows anyone who suspects a gun owner is a threat to report them to the police, who then must determine whether that person should be taken into protective custody, evaluated by a mental health professional, or apply for a court order to seize their firearms. Several people who knew Card, including his son and former wife, notified law enforcement about concerns about his behaviors in the months leading up to the shooting, the report said.

As a result, local police officers had reason to utilize their power under the state’s yellow flag laws before the shooting, the report said, reiterating a previous finding in the commission’s interim report from this year. The report said that police officers who testified in front of the commission said the yellow flag law is “cumbersome, inefficient and unduly restrictive.”

Report: Army Reserve officers did not tell police about all of Robert Card’s threatening behavior

The report also said officers in the Army Reserve, which Card was active in, failed to take steps to reduce the threat he posed to the public. The report found that Army Reserve officers were aware of Card’s concerning behavior, including hallucinations, aggressiveness, and ominous comments but did not notify local police officers about the full extent of the behavior.

According to the report, several of Card’s family members, friends, and fellow reservists alerted Army Reserve officials about concerning behavior. “Despite their knowledge, they ignored the strong recommendations of Card’s Army mental health providers to stay engaged with his care and ‘mak[e] sure that steps are taken to remove weapons’ from his home,’” the report added.

The commission said that if Army Reserve officers had notified police officers of the extent of Card’s behavior, they may have acted “more assertively.”

What happened in Lewiston

On Oct. 25, the 40-year-old Army reservist opened fire at a bar and bowling alley in Lewiston, killing 18 people and wounding 13. Days later, after an intense search that kept residents across the city locked in their homes, authorities found Card dead of a gunshot wound.

A post-mortem analysis of Robert Card’s brain by Boston University’s CTE Center, completed at the request of the Maine Chief Medical Examiner’s Office, revealed “significant evidence of traumatic brain injuries at the time of the shootings.” Card’s family made the findings public and declined to comment.

Among the injuries recorded by researchers were damage to the fibers that allow communication between areas of the brain, inflammation and a small blood vessel injury, according to the report signed by Dr. Ann McKee, director of the lab at Boston University, and released Wednesday. She said there was no evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disease often found in athletes and military veterans who have suffered repetitive head trauma.

“While I cannot say with certainty that these pathological findings underlie Mr. Card’s behavioral changes in the last 10 months of life, based on our previous work, brain injury likely played a role in his symptoms,” said Dr. Ann McKee, director of the lab at Boston University, earlier this year.

Contributing: Christopher Cann, Minnah Arshad, and Adrianna Rodriguez, USA TODAY

Following a malfunctioning fire suppression system at the former Brunswick Naval Air Station in Maine on Monday, approximately 1,600 gallons of “forever chemicals” were released.

According to officials from the Maine Regional Redevelopment Authority (MRRA) and the Brunswick Executive Airport, the incident occurred in Hangar 4, where the automated system unexpectedly activated and set off a series of wall-mounted cannons of foam to be released. About 1,600 gallons of the firefighting foam, laced with hazardous per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), was released along with 60,000 gallons of water, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

PFAS are a class of chemicals that can be found in a range of everyday products, from toilet paper to food packaging, cosmetics and dental floss. Nicknamed “forever chemicals,” these compounds break down very slowly over time and stick around in the surrounding environment.

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The widespread nature of forever chemicals have been concerning as numerous studies have found associations between PFAS exposure and increased blood cholesterol and blood pressure, reduced immunity, reproductive issues and an increased risk of certain cancers, the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry reports.

The Brunswick Naval Air Station, which officially closed in 2011, had mandated automated fire suppression systems in its large hangars.

According to WMTW, an ABC-affiliated station in Maine, the former Naval Air Station Brunswick is now called Brunswick Landing and is the site of the Brunswick Executive Airport.

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Brunswick Landing also :includes four flight schools, four educational institutions, more than 750 housing units, a technology business incubator and nearly 160 businesses that employ more than 2,500 people,” WMTW reported.

While the cause of the system’s failure is still under investigation, cleanup efforts are already underway as the Maine Department of Environmental Protection is overseeing the effort with Clean Harbors of South Portland deploying vacuum trucks, containment booms and tanks to mitigate the spill, the AP reported.

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“We take this situation very seriously and are committed to addressing the cleanup with the utmost urgency and transparency,” Kristine Logan, MRRA’s executive director told the AP.

Newsweek reached out to the Maine Regional Redevelopment Authority via email on Tuesday for comment.

The incident comes amid a broader concern regarding forever chemicals and possible groundwater contamination leading to health risks.

Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed new limits on these chemicals in drinking water. In addition, some fire departments began a shift away from PFAS-containing firefighting foams. This includes several fire departments in New Hampshire, where the state last week initiated a program to collect and safely dispose of such foams.

Meanwhile, a 2023 study by the U.S. Geological Survey found that about half of all U.S. tap water was found to contain some PFAS chemicals with New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania having the highest level of contamination.

Robert R. Card II, 40, of Bowdoin, who spent about two decades in the Army Reserve, went on a rampage the night of Oct. 25, killing 18 people and wounding 13 others at the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley, and Schemengees Bar & Grille Restaurant in Lewiston.

For nearly two days, thousands stayed in their homes as law enforcement searched for Card; his body was found at a recycling center in Lisbon. Authorities later determined he died of a self-inflicted gunshot.

Card experienced a rapid decline in his mental health that began about a year before the shooting. His family, friends, and colleagues grew worried about his increasingly erratic behavior, anger, and paranoia.

In May 2023, Card’s teenage son and ex-wife alerted local police about Card, his anger about being called a pedophile, and that he had just picked up as many as 15 guns from his brother’s house. The Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office passed along the warnings to Card’s Reserve unit, based in Saco, but did not make contact with him.

The following July, Card traveled to New York to join his unit to help train West Point cadets. Shortly after he arrived, he complained people were talking about him, and he tried to fight an Army colleague. Card’s commander, Captain Jeremy Reamer, ordered him to undergo an evaluation by a specialist at the Keller Army Community Hospital at West Point; an Army psychiatric nurse determined that Card showed signs of psychosis and paranoia and was unfit for duty.

The Army nurse recommended Card go to a civilian facility for a “higher level of care,” and Card went to the Four Winds psychiatric hospital in Katonah. While at Four Winds, Card showed symptoms of psychosis and “homicidal ideations” and told staff he had a “hit list,” according to an Army Reserve report on the shooting released last month.

Staff tried to have him involuntarily committed by a state court, but instead, Card’s Aug. 2, 2023, court date was canceled and he walked out of the facility the following day, according to the Reserve.

Staff at both the Army and civilian hospitals recommended that Card’s personal weapons be secured. Card wasn’t allowed access to military weapons while on duty, but Reamer has said he didn’t have the authority to seize Card’s personal weapons.

According to the Reserve’s report, administrative action has been taken against three officers in Card’s unit, though the report did not name them. The Reserve said Card’s chain of command failed to follow procedures, including related to his care after leaving Four Winds.

Despite warnings to police in Maine and New York and the Army Reserve, Card’s weapons were never secured by authorities, according to investigative reports released by the US Army Reserve last month and an interim report in March from the state commission.

Card was a grenade instructor in the Reserve. Researchers at Boston University who examined his brain tissue following the shooting found evidence of traumatic injury that could have been caused by blast injury. That brain damage could have also contributed to Card’s symptoms, according to the researchers.

The seven-member state commission was assembled by Governor Janet Mills just days after the shooting. Some of those affected directly by the massacre have told the Globe they want a full accounting of what went wrong, who bore responsibility for those failures, and a plan to prevent a future mass shooting.

“Too many people [were] passing the buck, and you got 18 people dead,” said Bobbi Nichols, who survived the gunfire at the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley, where her sister was killed. “I want to see transparency, I want to see accountability, I want to see something done so this doesn’t happen again.”

As the first anniversary of the shooting approaches, memorials to the victims still dot the landscape in Lewiston, including outside the bowling alley, which has reopened, and the restaurant, which remains closed.

John Hilliard can be reached at john.hilliard@globe.com. Sean Cotter can be reached at sean.cotter@globe.com. Follow him @cotterreporter.