Current:Home > NewsMaine mass shooter had a brain injury. Experts say that doesn’t explain his violence.-DB Wealth Institute B2 Expert Reviews
Maine mass shooter had a brain injury. Experts say that doesn’t explain his violence.
View Date:2024-12-23 14:06:18
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.”
___
Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire.
veryGood! (82416)
Related
- Sister Wives’ Madison Brush Details Why She Went “No Contact” With Dad Kody Brown
- Cissy Houston, Whitney Houston’s mother and a Grammy-winning singer, dies at 91
- Madonna Speaks Out About Brother Christopher Ciccone's Death After Years of Feuding
- Supreme Court won’t hear appeal from Elon Musk’s X platform over warrant in Trump case
- Are banks, post offices, UPS and FedEx open on Veterans Day? Here's what to know
- LeBron James and son Bronny become first father-son duo to play together in NBA history
- Pilot dies in a crash of a replica WWI-era plane in upstate New York
- Tia Mowry Shares Update on Her Dating Life After Cory Hardrict Divorce
- ONA Community Introduce
- Social media users dub Musk as 'energetic' and 'cringe' at Trump's Butler, PA rally
Ranking
- Watch a rescuer’s cat-like reflexes pluck a kitten from mid-air after a scary fall
- Georgia Supreme Court halts ruling striking down state’s near-ban on abortions as the state appeals
- Kamala Harris Addresses Criticism About Not Having Biological Children
- Old Navy’s Cozy Szn Sale Includes $24 Sweaters, $15 Joggers & More Fall-Ready Staples Up to 68% Off
- 'Underbanked' households more likely to own crypto, FDIC report says
- Milton to become a major hurricane Monday as it heads for Florida | The Excerpt
- Kansas City small businesses thank Taylor Swift for economic boom: 'She changed our lives'
- How did the Bills lose to Texans? Baffling time management decisions cost Buffalo
Recommendation
-
Brittany Cartwright Defends Hooking Up With Jax Taylor's Friend Amid Their Divorce
-
Matthew Broderick Says He Turned Down SATC Role as the Premature Ejaculator
-
Jury selection begins in murder trial of Minnesota man accused of killing his girlfriend
-
Billie Jean King named grand marshal for the 136th Rose Parade on Jan. 1
-
MLS Star Marco Angulo Dead at 22 One Month After Car Crash
-
Connecticut Sun force winner-take-all Game 5 with win over Minnesota Lynx
-
Supreme Court rejects Republican-led challenge to ease voter registration
-
Verizon says network disruption is resolved; FCC investigating outage