MORE from the Washington Post on the slaughter of worshipers at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas by a lone gunman with an automatic weapon (according to latest reports). The Post also notes the difference in reactions to recent mass shootings and acts of terrorism from NOT MY fascist, racist, bigoted pres drumpf/trump. So many are "appalled"and "horrified" by this latest mass shooting and will continue to oppose sane gun control legislation because that is what the nra tells them and the politicians they have bought to do. Hypocrites with bloody hands folded in hypocritical prayers for the victims and their families.
Investigators hunt for motive in Texas church shooting as the grieving spans generations
SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Tex. — Investigators on Monday scoured the background of the lone gunman who opened fire on the pews of the First Baptist Church, searching for answers on a possible motive while the stories of those massacred began to emerge.
Authorities said 26 people were killed in the Sunday rampage, the latest eruption of violence in a seemingly safe public space. The dead included eight relatives spanning three generations in a single family. While officials had said the victims ranged in age from 5 to 72, one family said a 1-year-old girl was also killed, part of the eight family members slain in the attack.
The gunman — described as a former member of the Air Force — fired upon the services with a Ruger assault-style rifle before he came under fire from a local man and fled in car chase. The attacker eventually ran off the roadway and apparently took his own life.
“There was some gunfire exchanged, I believe, on the roadway also, and then [the gunman’s vehicle] wrecked out,” Joe D. Tackitt Jr., the Wilson County sheriff, said in an interview with CBS News. “At this time we believe that he had a self-inflicted gunshot wound, after he wrecked out.”
Texas officials on early Monday identified the attacker as Devin Patrick Kelley of New Braunfels, about 35 miles north of Sutherland Springs.
Kelley, a 26-year-old former Air Force member, was court-martialed in 2012 and sentenced to a year in military prison for assaulting his spouse and child, making him the latest mass attacker or suspect with domestic violence in his past. He was reduced in rank and released with a bad-conduct discharge in 2014.
Few clues were initially made public on a possible motive or what made Kelley target a church in tiny Sutherland Springs. His in-laws had attended the church at some point, Tackitt told reporters early Monday, although they were not present Sunday; they only came to the scene later after hearing the news.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) suggested Monday morning that “there may have been a reason why this particular location was targeted,” though he did not go into detail, saying that the details could emerge in the coming hours or days.
“I don’t think this is a random act of shooting, a randomly chosen location, but obviously someone who is very deranged,” Abbott said in an interview on the “Today” show.
The attack left a staggering hole in a Texas town of fewer than 700 people located about 30 miles southeast of San Antonio.
“Nearly everyone [inside] had some type of injury,” Tackitt said. “I knew several people in there. It hasn’t really hit yet, but it will.”
All of the bodies were removed from the church overnight, Tackitt said, and were en route or already at the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s office in San Antonio. Inside the church, which remained cordoned off, was “a horrific site,” he said, adding “you don’t expect to walk into church and find mauled bodies.”
Tackitt said between 12 and 14 of the people killed or injured in the attack were children.
For some, the church massacre also reinforced a sense of unease that no place could be considered immune from possible violence after a concert ground in Las Vegas, a Walmart in Colorado, a Nashville church and a bike path in New York all became scenes of death and bloodshed over the past six weeks.
President Trump appeared to try to preemptively steer the debate away from gun control after the slayings. At a news conference in Tokyo, Trump said he thought “mental health” was a possible motive, adding that it appeared the shooter was “a very deranged individual, a lot of problems for a long period of time.” He did not provide further explanation.
The incident “isn’t a guns situation,” Trump said. “Fortunately someone else had a gun that was shooting in the opposite direction,” he added, or it “would have been much worse.”
Bailey LeJeaune, 17, and David Betancourt, 18, hold candles during a vigil in Sutherland Springs for the victims of a deadly shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Nov. 5, 2017. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP)
Trump’s reaction contrasted with his unrestrained calls for a death sentence for the Uzbek immigrant accused of killing eight people in an apparently Islamic State-inspired attack in Lower Manhattan last week.
Witnesses said the gunman in Texas, dressed in all black and wearing a tactical vest, began firing an assault rifle as he approached the church. Police said the gunman killed two people outside before entering the church and spraying bullets at the congregation during morning worship.
After the exchange of gunfire with an armed civilian, the gunman drove away with two local men in pursuit.
It was “act now, ask questions later,” said the truck’s driver, Johnnie Langendorff. By the time they caught up with him, however, the fleeing man had crashed his SUV into a ditch. “He might have been unconscious from the crash or something like that, I’m not sure,” Langendorff told reporters.
“The local citizen pursued him,” said Freeman Martin, a regional director for the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The attack targeted young and old, tearing apart families. Joe and Claryce Holcombe lost children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren all at once, a total of eight extended family members, the couple said in a phone interview with The Post.
Their son, Bryan Holcombe, 60, and his wife, Carla Holcombe, 58, were killed. Bryan was associate pastor for the church and walking to preach at the pulpit when he was shot, Joe Holcombe told The Post.
Among the dead was also their granddaughter-in-law, Crystal Holcombe, who was pregnant. She died along with her unborn child and three of her children, Emily, Megan and Greg, according to Joe Holcombe. She had been at church with her husband, John Holcombe, who survived along with two of her other children.
Their grandson, Marc Daniel Holcombe and his infant daughter, who is about a year old, also died, Joe and Claryce Holcombe said.
Kevin Jordan, 30, was changing the oil in his Ford Focus ahead of a family road trip when he heard the pops of gunfire. When he stood up and turned his head, he saw a man wearing body armor, a vest and a mask walk down the sidewalk toward the church about 50 yards from his home.
“He was just spraying at the front of the church,” Jordan said. “He was shooting outside at first, and then he walked to the door and started shooting inside.”
After spotting the shooter, Jordan said, he ran inside his home, scooped up his son, alerted his wife and rushed his family into their bathroom, where they crouched and hid while calling 911. He said the shooter spotted him as he fled and took a shot that went through his front window, nearly hitting his 2-year-old son.
“I looked at the shooter, and he looked right at me,” he said. When the shooting stopped, Jordan, who works as a medical assistant, ran to the church, hoping to help.
“I walked inside and just walked out. I couldn’t handle it,” he said. “It was bad. A lot of blood and bodies. The pews were knocked over. I’m a medical assistant and medical assisting does not prepare you for this.”
Tucked a few hundred yards off Highway 87 amid scrubby farmland, the dusty and usually quiet streets of Sutherland Springs, lined with modest one-story family homes and trailers. A town with few streetlights that typically goes dark after sundown flashed red and blue with police lights on almost every block.
In a matter of minutes, Sutherland Springs was transformed into the latest community riven by grief after a mass attack. In late September, a masked gunman stormed into a small community church outside of Nashville and shot seven people, including the pastor, killing one. Authorities said the suspect in that shooting, Emanuel Kidega Samson, might have been motivated by a desire for revenge for a 2015 shooting that targeted black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C. — an attack that left nine people dead.
The Texas attack also came just over a month after 58 people were killed at a Las Vegas country music festival, in what was the deadliest mass shooting in recent U.S. history. The gunman in Las Vegas, Stephen Paddock, killed himself after a lengthy shooting spree from his 32nd-floor Mandalay Bay hotel suite, and authorities have still not determined a possible motive.
Frank Pomeroy, the pastor of First Baptist Church, told ABC News that he was not present during the church service but that his teenage daughter, Annabelle Pomeroy, 14, was among the dead.
“She was very quiet, shy, always smiling, and helpful to all,” Cynthia Rangel, 50, a resident of nearby Stockdale, said of the teenager. Rangel, a local emergency medical technician, said she knew three individuals who were hospitalized after the shooting and were undergoing surgery. “This just all seems like it’s not real.”
Dana Fletcher, who owns a business a quarter-mile from the church, said she and her family just moved to Sutherland Springs. She said she was first alerted to the shooting by a call from a reporter.
“My husband and I both are still in shock,” she said. “It’s a little tiny church that was targeted. It’s shocking. It’s a bit frightening because it’s a little bit close to home.”
The church is a part of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the country, with about 15 million members. First Baptist reported an average estimated attendance of 100 in 2015. The church is affiliated with the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, considered one of Texas’s more theologically conservative groups of Southern Baptists.
Berman and Phillips reported from Washington. Mary Lee Grace in San Antonio; Eva Ruth Moravec in Sutherland Springs; and Wesley Lowery, Brian Murphy, Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Ed O’Keefe, Alex Horton, Samantha Schmidt and Devlin Barrett in Washington contributed to this report, which will be updated throughout the day.
The Post Recommends
Few people have spoken publicly about Kelley's background, and a search of public records offered only a sketch of his life, with no indication of what precipitated the deadly attack on churchgoers.
"God will see us through," said great-grandfather Joe Holcombe, who lost 8 people from his extended family and an unborn child.
No comments:
Post a Comment