Survivors and family members of victims of the 2023 mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, are suing the US government, alleging that the US army could have stopped the attack carried out by an army reservist but failed to intervene.
The suit, filed on Wednesday in Maine district court, alleges that despite decades of knowledge about the risks posed by soldiers in crisis, the policies and procedures the army has developed around dealing with service members who are struggling with severe mental health challenges were not used to disarm the shooter, a sergeant with a 21-year history in the army reserve. Eighteen people were killed in the attack.
“The army repeatedly violated its own policies and its own procedures,” Benjamin Gideon, one of the attorneys who filed the suit, said at a Wednesday press conference.
“We have no choice but to file this lawsuit on behalf of our clients to hopefully – finally, after almost two years – gain some semblance of closure and justice for them and their family and to provide some measure of accountability,” he said.
The shooter opened fire in Lewiston’s Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley, killing eight people. He then drove about four miles to Schemengees Bar and Grille, where he shot and killed 10 others. After a nearly two-day search, the suspect was found dead after shooting himself in a trailer at a recycling plant.
The suit alleges that the US army knew that the shooter posed a public-safety risk several months before the October 2023 shooting, but failed to intervene. According to the suit, red flags included text messages and concerning interactions between the shooter and his peers, and targeted threats, which led his fellow soldiers and family to warn army reserve leadership and police that he was at risk of carrying out a mass shooting.
“Despite these warnings and repeated opportunities, the army failed to act,” the lawsuit reads.
The army did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last August, an independent commission investigating the mass shooting concluded that the gunman’s army reserve unit missed “several opportunities” that “might have changed the course of events”.
The suit was filed by more than a hundred survivors and family members of victims. Some of the plaintiffs lost loved ones in the shooting, others survived being shot, and some were bystanders or in the “zone of danger”, according to the complaint.
The shooting devastated an entire community, said Cynthia Young, whose son and husband, William and Aaron Young, were shot and killed at the bowling alley.
“On October 25 2023, we lost something precious. Some of us lost our loved ones, some of us have lost the ability to feel safe and secure,” Young said at the press conference.
“Today our group takes its next steps toward justice for our loved ones,” she said. “We want to heal but we will never be whole. It’s time to hold those who are responsible accountable for those actions. And we all hope that these steps will help prevent tragedies such as this form ever happening again.
This suit is one of several that have been filed in the last decade against entities such the government, gun manufacturers and tech companies by survivors and family members seeking recourse for their injuries and losses.
In the past four years, the US government has settled with the families of people killed in mass shootings in Parkland, Florida, Sutherland Springs, Texas, and Charleston, South Carolina, for more than $350m combined.
In 2022, families of the eight people killed at a railyard in San Jose, California, in 2021 won a settlement with the local transit agency for an undisclosed amount.
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