On the night of October 25, 2023, a 40-year-old Army reservist named Robert Card walked into Just-In-Time Recreation, a bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine, where a youth league was playing. He opened fire with a rifle. Minutes later, he drove to Schemengees Bar & Grille, where a cornhole tournament was underway, and opened fire again.
When he was done, 18 people were dead and 13 were wounded. It was the deadliest mass shooting in Maine's history.
For two days, Card was on the run, and Lewiston and the towns around it locked down. On October 27, police found him dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in nearby Lisbon Falls.
The warning signs had been there for months. Card's family and fellow reservists had reported that he was paranoid and hearing voices. That summer he spent two weeks in a psychiatric hospital. An independent commission later found that the local sheriff's office could have, and should have, taken away his guns under Maine's "yellow flag" law weeks before the shooting. The Army disciplined three officers in his chain of command.
Americans responded the way they always do. Donations poured in from across the country to help the families of the 18 victims and the survivors who would carry their wounds for the rest of their lives. The Maine Community Foundation set up the Lewiston-Auburn Area Response Fund to collect the money. It raised about $6.6 million.
Families were told where it would go. On November 22, 2023, a "mass violence response consultant" working with the foundation emailed grieving relatives: "100% of all donations go to the victims/survivors of this tragic event."
That isn't how it worked out.
The foundation split the money into two pots. The Victims and Families Fund paid out about $4.7 million to 162 people: relatives of those killed, survivors who were wounded, and others directly affected. The other pot, the "Broad Recovery Efforts and Organizations Fund," sent $1.9 million to 29 local nonprofits. Each got exactly $65,522.
Jennifer Zanca was shot at Schemengees. When she saw the numbers, she did the math. "I realized that each nonprofit received more than twice the amount that I had," she said.
About a year after the shooting, Zanca needed surgery. She was left with $93,000 in hospital bills her insurance company refused to pay. "The FBI, Homeland Security came to my home and told me I would never have to worry about hospital bills," she said.
Meanwhile, the nonprofit checks went to groups like the Somali Bantu Community Association, Generational Noor, the New Mainers Public Health Initiative, Empowered Immigrant Women Unite, and Gateway Community Services. Lewiston is home to one of the largest Somali communities in America, and critics count at least nine recipients that mainly serve immigrants. Other checks went to the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition and Maine Inside Out, a group that works with incarcerated youth.
The people choosing the recipients included a steering committee of nonprofit leaders, among them the heads of the Somali Bantu Community Association and Gateway Community Services. Their organizations got $65,522 apiece. VictimsFirst, a national group that works with families after mass shootings and was one of the fund's largest donors, called the arrangement "highly unethical in its self-dealing." It said 90% of the nonprofits never responded to the needs of the people actually harmed in the shooting.
The foundation never required the nonprofits to file full reports showing how they spent the money. It admitted as much in a fact sheet this February, saying most groups shared information voluntarily.
The foundation's defense is that donors could choose which fund their money went to, that the two-fund setup was public, and that undesignated donations were split evenly. Families say nobody told them that at the time. What they were told, in writing, was "100% of all donations."
They've been fighting ever since. In April, 57 survivors and relatives filed a complaint with Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey, a Democrat. His office declined it. When lawmakers asked the state's government watchdog to investigate, Frey ruled in September that it had no authority, because the donations were private money.
"We are continuing to demand accountability," said Amy Sussman, whose nephew Maxx Hathaway was killed that night. Candidates for governor, including Bobby Charles and David Jones, have taken up the families' cause. One nonprofit has reportedly agreed to return its money.
Robert Card killed 18 people in Lewiston. Americans sent millions to help the families he left behind. Three years later, a woman he shot is stuck with $93,000 in hospital bills, while 29 nonprofits each received $65,522 from money raised in the victims' names, and no one has had to account for how they spent it.
