“Final reports will not be available for several months due to toxicology and other studies being conducted,” the agency said.
Robert R. Card II died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, but the results of toxicology tests that could determine whether he was medicated or under the influence of alcohol when he went on a shooting rampage in Lewiston, Maine won’t be known for months, the Maine State Medical Examiner’s office said Friday.
One of the unanswered questions about the massive search for Card, a 40-year-old Army reservist, after the Oct. 25 shootings that killed 18 people and wounded 13 more is when he took his own life.
Advertisement
Card’s body was discovered Oct. 27 in a storage trailer in Lisbon, not far from where he had abandoned his car after the shootings.
In a brief statement Friday, Maine Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Mark Flomenbaum said the severity of Card’s head injury from the gunshot wound and the resulting blood loss made it difficult to determine when he died, as pathologists routinely do in homicide cases.
“Mr. Card’s cause of death was determined to be gunshot wound of head and manner of death is suicide,” he said. “Mr. Card had ‘empty heart sign’ from the trauma of the gunshot wound and the interpretation of post-mortem interval may be compromised.”
The phrase “empty heart sign” is used by pathologists to indicate a massive loss of blood.
Under Maine law, the official time of death is when a person’s body is found, the medical examiner’s office said.
Autopsy reports in Maine are not public record and “not available to a third party without next of kin permission.”
Pictured on West Road, just before the intersection with Bowdoin Road are police officers who had the turn to Bowdoin Road blocked off. Mass murder suspect Robert Card lived nearby. Jim Davis for The Boston Globe
John R. Ellement can be reached at john.ellement@globe.com. Follow him @JREbosglobe.
Maine shooter Robert Card died of gunshot wound to head
