Maine
Maine mass shooter had a brain injury. Experts say that doesn't explain his violence.
BOSTON (AP) — Brain injury experts are cautioning against drawing conclusions from newly released and limited information about evidence of a brain injury in an Army reservist who killed 18 people last year in Maine’s deadliest mass shooting.
Boston University researchers who analyzed a sample of Robert Card’s brain tissue said Wednesday they found evidence of traumatic brain injury. The analysis, requested by the Maine medical examiner, found degeneration in the nerve fibers allowing communication between different areas of the brain, inflammation and small blood vessel injury, according to Dr. Ann McKee of the university’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Center.
Card had been an instructor at an Army hand grenade training range, where it is believed he was exposed to repeated low-level blasts. It is unknown if that caused Card’s brain injury and what role the injury may have played in his declining mental health before he opened fire at a bowling alley and bar in Lewiston on Oct. 25.
McKee made no connection between the injury and Card’s violent actions.
“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,” McKee said in a statement released by the Card family.
Dr. Alexandra Filippakis, a neurologist who has treated members of the military and others for traumatic brain injuries, said Thursday she would not conclude brain injury played a role in Card’s behavior based on McKee’s description of her findings.
“TBI is a very broad diagnosis, and it looks different in different people. Not everybody has the same symptoms. Not everybody has the same severity of symptoms,” Filippakis said. “There’s no way that you could, with certainty, link that to a particular action.”
Filippakis, who works at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover, New Hampshire, said the connectivity damage McKee described is common and can have many causes, including aging, high blood pressure and smoking.
“That could mean so many different things,” she said. “You certainly can’t draw any conclusions from that piece of information.”
But James Stone, a University of Virginia radiologist who has studied repeated low-level blast exposure in the military, said changes to Card’s brain “seemed pretty profound.”
Such injuries can affect impulse control and emotional regulation, he said, and though he doesn’t know if those parts of Card’s brain were affected, “it’s certainly hard to imagine that the level of brain changes that we’re seeing in some way did not contribute to his behavior.”
Chris Dulla, a professor and interim chair of neuroscience at Tufts School of Medicine, said he was surprised that researchers found no evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which has plagued many professional football players.
“It doesn’t seem to be as cut and dry,” he said. “What that speaks to is how varied traumatic brain injuries are, and how difficult they can be to diagnose, even in the postmortem brain sample, when you can study every detail.”
The findings highlight the connection between brain injuries and underlying psychological conditions, Dulla said.
“If you’re already struggling with some kind of psychiatric condition or at risk for some kind of psychiatric problem, brain injuries might be something that can kind of push you over the edge and have that change really come front and center when it might have been sort of a minor underlying thing before,” he said.
Experts say traumatic brain injury can lead to headaches, mood changes, memory loss and sleep issues. Stone said his research has shown repeated exposure to even low-level blasts can result in changes to the brain. The Department of Defense has been “very engaged” in studying the issue, Stone said, and a panel on which he serves is expected to release new guidelines in May for both the U.S. military and NATO allies.
“They’ve been very proactive about this,” he said.
An Army spokesperson on Thursday called the lab findings regarding Card “concerning” and said they “underscore the Army’s need to do all it can to protect Soldiers against blast-induced injury.”
In addition to updating the guidance on risk mitigation, the Army plans to launch a public safety campaign and will begin requiring documentation of training environments and tracking of exposed personnel.
Sean Hodgson, Card’s close friend and a fellow reservist, said Thursday that safety was a top priority at their training range and the blast exercises were well controlled.
“You feel it through you, but it’s mild,” he said.
“I never heard him complain about the blasts,” Hodgson said. “In my opinion it’s one of the safest ranges to be on. I never heard him complain about the blasts.”
Six weeks before the shooting, Hodgson texted an Army supervisor about his growing concerns about Card, saying, “I believe he’s going to snap and do a mass shooting.”
That Sept. 15 message came months after relatives warned police that Card had grown paranoid and said they were concerned about his access to guns.
Card was hospitalized in a psychiatric unit for two weeks in July after shoving a fellow reservist and locking himself in a motel room. In August, the Army barred him from handling weapons while on duty and declared him nondeployable.
In their first public comments since the shooting, Card’s family members apologized Wednesday for the attack, saying they are heartbroken for the victims, survivors and their loved ones.
“We are hurting for you and with you, and it is hard to put into words how badly we wish we could undo what happened,” they said in a statement. “While we cannot go back, we are releasing the findings of Robert’s brain study with the goal of supporting ongoing efforts to learn from this tragedy to ensure it never happens again.”
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Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire.
Maine
This Classic New England-Style Cottage in Maine Has 200 Feet of Atlantic Ocean Frontage
A waterfront home with open ocean views on the coast of Maine came to market Tuesday asking $4 million.
Built in 1978, the three-bedroom cottage is at the southern point of Cape Elizabeth, less than 10 miles from downtown Portland. The 1.1-acre property on Sunny Bank Road features 200 feet of south-facing water frontage on the wide open Atlantic.
It is bordered by a rocky sea wall that’s about 28 feet high, according to listing agent Sam Michaud Legacy Properties Sotheby’s International Realty
“The views are like a Monet painting,” he said via email. “The water sparkles and the waves are endless.”
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The 3,364-square-foot home was built in classic New England style, with shingle siding, a single sloped roofline and large windows—complemented by white-washed walls, exposed-beam ceilings and wide-plank flooring on the interiors.
The main common area features cathedral ceilings with a step-down between the living and dining room, and a partial wall divides the dining room from the kitchen. There is also a wood-paneled family room off the kitchen, a gym and a covered porch.
The sellers purchased the property in 2010 for $1.562 million, according to property records accessed through PropertyShark. They could not immediately be reached for comment.
“I have received quite a few inquiries since hitting the market two days ago,” Michaud said. “Buyers understand that this is a golden opportunity to own over an acre with 200 feet of bold oceanfront in Cape Elizabeth.”
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There are currently just seven three-bedroom homes available for sale in Cape Elizabeth and fewer than five waterfront properties, according to Sotheby’s and Zillow data. It is also the most expensive listing in the town, with another waterfront property on a tiny lot just south of Portland coming in a close second, according to Zillow.
Michaud sold the former Cape Elizabeth home of Bette Davis this past summer for $13.4 million, the priciest sale on the cape in at least a decade—and even those views can’t compare. They’re “just magical,” he said.
Maine
NECEC conservation plan will not protect Maine’s mature forests | Opinion
Robert Bryan is a licensed forester from Harpswell and author or co-author of numerous publications on managing forests for wildlife. Paul Larrivee is a licensed forester from New Gloucester who manages both private and public lands, and a former Maine Forest Service forester.
In November 2025, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) approved a conservation plan and forest management plan as mitigation for impacts from the NECEC transmission corridor that runs from the Quebec border 53 miles to central Maine.
As professional foresters, we were astonished by the lack of scientific credibility in the definition of “mature forest habitat” that was approved by DEP, and the business-as-usual commercial forestry proposed for over 80% of the conservation area.
The DEP’s approval requires NECEC to establish and protect 50,000 acres to be managed for mature-forest wildlife species and wildlife travel corridors along riparian areas and between mature forest habitats. The conservation plan will establish an area adjacent to the new transmission corridor to be protected under a conservation easement held by the state. Under this plan, 50% of the area will be managed as mature forest habitat.
Under the forest management plan, a typical even-aged stand will qualify as “mature forest habitat” once 50 feet tall, which is only about 50 years old. These stands will lack large trees that provide wildlife denning and nesting sites, multiple vegetation layers that mature-forest birds use for nesting and feeding habitats and large decaying trees and downed logs that provide habitat for insects, fungi and small mammals, which in turn benefit larger predators.
Another major concern is that contrary to the earlier DEP order, the final approval allows standard sustainable forestry operations on the 84% of the forest located outside the stream buffers and special habitats. These stands may be harvested as soon as they achieve the “mature forest habitat” definition, as long as 50% of the conserved land is maintained as “mature.”
After the mature forest goal is reached, clearcutting or other heavy harvesting could occur on thousands of acres every 10 years. Because the landowner — Weyerhaeuser — owns several hundred thousand acres in the vicinity, any reductions in harvesting within the conservation area can simply be offset by cutting more heavily nearby. As a result, the net
mature-forest benefit of the conservation area will be close to zero.
Third, because some mature stands will be cut before the 50% mature forest goal is reached, it will take 40 years — longer than necessary — to reach the goal.
In the near future the Board of Environmental Protection (BEP) will consider an appeal from environmental organizations of the plan approval. To ensure that ecologically mature forest develops in a manner that meets the intent of the DEP/BEP orders, several things need to change.
First and most important, to ensure that characteristics of mature forest habitat have time to develop it is critical that the definition include clear requirements for the minimum number of large-diameter (hence more mature) trees, adjusted by forest type. At least half the stocking of an area of mature forest habitat should be in trees at least 10 inches in diameter, and at least 20% of stands beyond the riparian buffers should have half the stocking in trees greater than or equal to 16 inches in diameter.
Current research as well as guidelines for defining ecologically mature forests, such as those in Maine Audubon’s Forestry for Maine Birds, should be followed.
Second, limits should be placed on the size and distribution of clearcut or “shelterwood” harvest patches so that even-aged harvests are similar in size to those created by typical natural forest disturbance patterns. These changes will help ensure that the mature-forest block and connectivity requirements of the orders are met.
Third, because the forest impacts have already occurred, no cutting should be allowed in the few stands that meet or exceed the DEP-approved definition — which needs to be revised as described above — until the 50% or greater mature-forest goal is reached.
If allowed to stand, the definitions and management described in the forest management plan would set a terrible precedent for conserving mature forests in Maine. The BEP should uphold the appeal and establish standards for truly mature forest habitat.
Maine
Rage Room in Portland, Maine, Developing ‘Scream Room’ Addition
For a lot of people throughout Maine, there’s some built up frustration that they’ve just been keeping inside.
That frustration can come in a lot of different forms. From finances to relationships to the world around you.
So it makes plenty of sense that a rage room opened in Portland, Maine, where people can let some of that frustration out.
It’s called Mayhem and people have been piling in to smash, crush and do dastardly things to inanimate objects that had no idea what was coming.
But Mayhem has realized not everyone is down with swinging a sledgehammer. So they’ve decided to cook up something new.
Mayhem Creating ‘Scream Room’ at Their Space in Portland, Maine
Perhaps the thought of swinging a baseball bat and destroying a glass vase brings you joy. The thought of how sore your body will be after that moment makes you less excited.
Mayhem Portland has heard you loud and clear and is developing a new way to get the rage out. By just screaming.
Mayhem is working on opening their very first scream room. It’s exactly what you think it is, a safe place to spend some time just screaming all of the frustration out.
There isn’t an official opening date set yet but it’s coming soon along with pricing.
Mayhem in Portland, Maine, Will Still Offer Rage Rooms and Paint Splatter
While a scream room is on the way, you can still experience a good time at Mayhem with one of their rage rooms or a paint splatter room.
Both can be experienced in either 20-minute or 30-minute sessions.
All the details including some age and attire requirements can be found here.
TripAdvisor’s Top 10 Things to do in Portland, Maine
Looking for fun things to do in Portland, ME? Here is what the reviewers on TripAdvisor say are the 10 best attractions.
This list was updated in March of 2026
Gallery Credit: Chris Sedenka
Top 15 of The Most Powerful People in Maine
Ever wonder who the most powerful players are in Maine? I’ve got a list!
Gallery Credit: Getty Images
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