Missed Warnings: How Scripps News investigated the Maine shooting
By Lori Jane Gliha and Brittany Freeman, Scripps News
When a gunman killed 18 people during a shooting spree in Lewiston, Maine in October 2023, our team did what many reporters might do in a breaking news situation: we asked a ton of questions, and we filed open records requests for anything that might give insight on what happened and why.
Slowly we gathered tidbits of information: The shooter was a member of the Army Reserve in Maine; His military colleagues once called police in New York to report his frightening behavior during training; A local deputy in Maine had also been alerted to his threats but failed to make contact with him;No one removed the shooter’s guns from his possession despite multiple warning signs.
Some of this information came out more than a month after the mass shooting. Many journalists, including our own team, had started working on other stories.
Although we had a lot on our plate, we still wanted to know the answer to one specific question:
How was no one able to stop a member of the U.S. Army Reserve from carrying out this horrific attack, given there were multiple warning signs in the prior months?
We knew there were laws in New York and Maine that paved the way for a threatening person’s firearms to be removed from their possession in situations like this.
But nobody used those laws.
The next steps
An initial independent review of one law enforcement agency’s involvement in the situation had been released, so we scoured it for clues that might help us figure out what went wrong.
In a spreadsheet we created, we started documenting the names of every member of law enforcement who had contact with the shooter or knew of his threatening behavior and access to guns.
We familiarized ourselves with the Red Flag Law in New York and the Yellow Flag Law in Maine, then filed open records requests for police training records to see how officers at multiple departments had been trained on those laws.
When we learned the killer had been confronted by New York State Police three months prior to the massacre in Maine, we immediately sought the body camera footage and reports from that incident.
We also requested video and audio records that would reveal how every law enforcement agency responded to any reports that preceded the shooting.
We made multiple phone calls to people familiar with the situation, and we watched hours of public testimony from the military, the public, law enforcement and family members of the shooter.
Obstacles
Some agencies did not want to help us get information.
When we requested documentation showing whether the New York State Police troopers were trained on the Red Flag Law, we received this response from the records department: “We conducted a diligent search of our files and we were unable to locate records responsive to your request.”
This didn’t seem correct based on our research, so we inquired further.
We knew the New York governor had beefed up the Red Flag Law in 2022, even issuing an executive order that would require officers to pursue Red Flag orders when they had probable cause that someone might be harmful.
The executive order also required NYSP troopers be “trained and instructed” on how to apply for an extreme risk protection order under the law.
Given all this information, how was it possible that the involved police troopers had not been trained on the Red Flag Law?
It was difficult to get a straight answer, but a significant part of any investigative reporter’s success is persistence.
The state police first tried to shut us down with this message: “The Maine shooting is an active investigation, and the New York State Police does not comment on active investigations…”
The only problem with that statement was that we already had records, provided by the New York State Police, that contradicted what they said. Those records showed their own investigation had been “closed.”
So, we pushed back again.
Then we received a vague response: “One of the State Police members who responded to the incident at Camp Smith on July 16, 2023, attended the basic school [after September 2019] and would have received instruction on the Extreme Risk Protection Order law during Academy training. However, all of the members who responded to the incident on that day have received training on responding to incidents that may involve potentially mentally ill and/or emotionally disturbed persons.”
Instead of answering whether all the troopers had training on the Red Flag Law, the public information officers told us about a completely different training the officers had received.
We tried to clarify the response about a dozen times, even asking specific yes/no questions, but the agency continued to skirt the answers.
After weeks of back-and-forth emails, we finally learned that the two senior troopers on the scene with the suspect had never received hands-on training on the Red Flag Law with an actual instructor. They were simply given manuals and guidebooks..
Was this what the governor intended when she said every officer should be trained and instructed on how to use the law?
The third trooper on the scene was probationary and had only been on the job for eight months. Video shows he barely said anything during the confrontation with the suspect.
The governor’s office ignored at least a dozen requests for an interview or a comment, never acknowledging receipt of any of Scripps News’ messages.
Since she wouldn’t answer our questions, we searched for past press events in which she spoke publicly about the Red Flag Law. We were able to include a video record of her own public statements about the importance of the law.
Meanwhile, an analysis of the data in our original spreadsheet found at least 23 Maine police officers did have training on their state’s Yellow Flag Law, including the deputy who visited the suspect’s home to conduct a welfare check prior to the shooting.
But no one used the law.
That deputy was called out, by name, in a scathing report released by a state commission investigating the shooting.
In video footage we obtained through an open records request, we could hear him contemplating using the law. But it wasn’t clear why he never went through with it.
We wanted to hear from him, directly, about his decision-making process.
We reached out to him and his boss, the sheriff, for an interview, but they declined.
The deputy told Scripps News he was under a “gag order” imposed by the sheriff and could not participate in any interviews.
However, through multiple exchanges via email and over the phone over multiple weeks, the team persuaded the sheriff to lift the restriction, and both men participated in their first national television interviews following the state commission’s report. Other journalists also were able to interview them as a result.
It took many months and several hours-long phone conversations to obtain one other key interview with a whistleblower. He had warned his military superiors that he was afraid the shooter was going to snap ahead of the shooting, but his superiors downplayed his concerns.
These are just some of the key milestones in the reporting of this story. Fortunately, we were able to make a few reporting trips to Maine to attend public hearings and to meet many of the citizens who were directly impacted by this tragic event.
Graciously, some of them shared their experiences with us, and for that, we are grateful.
Our Scripps News team — which included reporter Lori Jane Gliha, producer Brittany Freeman, videographer Alex Brauer, editor Colin McIntyre, and executive producer Max McClellan — is proud to say we were able to break new ground on this important story, and we hope our investigation may help others better understand what went wrong leading up to the deadliest mass shooting of 2023.