Texas Church Shooting Leaves at Least 26 Dead, Officials Say
SUTHERLAND
SPRINGS, Tex. — A gunman clad in all black, with a ballistic vest
strapped to his chest and a military-style rifle in his hands, opened
fire on parishioners at a Sunday service at a small Baptist church in
rural Texas, killing at least 26 people and turning this tiny town east
of San Antonio into the scene of the country’s newest mass horror.
The
gunman was identified as Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, according to two law
enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because
the investigation is continuing. Mr. Kelley, who lived in New Braunfels,
Tex., and had served in the Air Force at a base in New Mexico, died
shortly after the attack.
The
motive of the attack was unclear on Sunday, but the grisly nature of it
could not have been clearer: families gathered in pews, clutching
Bibles and praying to the Lord, were murdered in cold blood on the spot.
Mr.
Kelley started firing at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs
not long after the Sunday morning service began at 11 a.m., officials
said. He was armed with a Ruger military-style rifle, and within
minutes, many of those inside the small church were either dead or
wounded. The victims ranged in age from 5 to 72, and among the dead were
several children, a pregnant woman and the pastor’s 14-year-old
daughter. It was the deadliest mass shooting in the state’s history. At
least 20 more were wounded.
“It’s
something we all say does not happen in small communities, although we
found out today it does,” said Joe Tackitt, the sheriff of Wilson
County, which includes Sutherland Springs.
Sheriff
Tackitt and other officials said the gunman first stopped at a gas
station across Highway 87 from the church. He drove across the street,
got out of his car and began firing from the outside, moving to the
right side of the church, the authorities said. Then he entered the
building and kept firing.
The
authorities received their first call about a gunman at about 11:20
a.m.. Officials and witnesses said Mr. Kelley appeared to be prepared
for an assault, with black tactical gear, multiple rounds of ammunition
and a ballistic vest.
“He
went there, he walked in, started shooting people and then took off,”
said Representative Henry Cuellar, a Texas congressman who represents
the region and who was briefed by law enforcement officials.
When
Mr. Kelley emerged from the church, an armed neighbor exchanged gunfire
with him, hitting Mr. Kelley, who fled in his vehicle. Neighbors
apparently followed him, chasing him into the next county, Guadalupe
County, where Mr. Kelley crashed his car. Mr. Kelley was found dead in
his vehicle. Officials said it was unclear how Mr. Kelley had died.
At
the church, he left behind a scene of carnage. Of the 26 fatalities, 23
people were found dead inside the church, two were found outside and
one died later at a hospital.
In
nearby Floresville, hours after the attack, Scott Holcombe, 30, sat
with his sister on the curb outside the emergency room at Connally
Memorial Medical Center. They were both in tears. Their parents, Bryan
and Karla Holcombe, had been at the church and had been killed.
“I’m
dumbfounded,” Mr. Holcombe said. “This is unimaginable. My father was a
good man and he loved to preach. He had a good heart.”
His
sister, Sarah Slavin, 33, added: “They weren’t afraid of death. They
had a strong faith, so there’s comfort in that. I feel like my parents,
especially my mom, wasn’t scared.”
What Happened at the Texas Church Shooting
A shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, Tex., killed at least 26 people on Sunday.
A
parishioner, Sandy Ward, said that a daughter-in-law and three of her
grandchildren were shot. Her grandson, who is 5, was shot four times and
remained in surgery Sunday night. She said she was awaiting word on her
other family members.
Ms.
Ward said she did not attend services on Sunday because of her troubled
knees and a bad hip. “I just started praying for everybody who was
there” when she learned of the shooting, she said.
At
a news conference on Sunday, Gov. Greg Abbott said that he and other
Texans were asking “for God’s comfort, for God’s guidance and for God’s
healing for all those who are suffering.”
President Trump, who was in Japan on a trip to several Asian countries, called it a “horrific shooting.”
In
a time of crisis, he said, “Americans will do what we do best: we pull
together and join hands and lock arms and through the tears and sadness
we stand strong.”
The
Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives were helping in the investigation, which was
being led by the Texas Rangers.
The
shooting unfolded on the eighth anniversary of the attack in 2009 on
Fort Hood in Texas, when an Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan,
killed 13 people in one of the deadliest mass shootings at an American
military base. Major Hasan carried out his attack in an attempt to wage
jihad on American military personnel.
The
death toll on Sunday also exceeded the number killed in 1966 by a
student at the University of Texas at Austin, Charles Whitman, who
opened fire from the school’s clock tower in a day of violence in that
ultimately killed 17.
And the shooting on Sunday occurred more than two years after Dylann S. Roof
opened fire at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in
Charleston, S.C., in June 2015, killing nine people, including the
pastor. The motive in that attack was racial hatred — Mr. Roof, a white
supremacist, plotted an assault on a black congregation — but no motive
has been established by the authorities in the shooting in Sutherland
Springs. The First Baptist Church is predominantly white, and Mr. Kelley
is white.
The
authorities said Mr. Kelley used an Ruger AR-15 variant — a knockoff of
the standard service rifle carried by the American military for roughly
half a century.
Almost
all AR-15 variants legally sold in the United States fire only
semiautomatically, and were covered by the federal assault weapons ban
that went into effect in 1994. Since the ban expired in 2004, the
weapons have been legal to sell or possess in much of the United States
and sales of AR-15s have surged.
Ruger’s AR-15s made for civilian markets sell for about $500 to $900, depending on the model.
Mr.
Kelley grew up in New Braunfels, in his parents’ nearly $1 million
home, and was married in 2014. Why he chose to attack a church 30 miles
away is one of the questions that remained unanswered.
Sutherland
Springs in Wilson County is about 34 miles east of downtown San
Antonio, in a slow-paced region where church-going is a common part of
the Sunday routine. The church marquee on Sunday needed updating from
last week, reading, “Join Us, Fall Fest, Oct 31, 6 to 8 PM.”
The unincorporated community has a population that numbers in the low hundreds — the 2000 census was 362, according to the Texas State Historical Association. The preliminary death toll would amount to about 7 percent of that population.
Joseph
Silva, 49, who lives about five miles northeast of Sutherland Springs,
said the police had instructed his family and neighbors to stay indoors.
He described Sutherland Springs as “a one-blinking-light town.”
“There is a gas station and a post office,” he said. “That’s about all there really is.”
Mr.
Silva said he had been approached by a woman who said she had two loved
ones at the church who were shot. “There are a number of individuals
just weeping and just wanted to know what’s happened to their loved
ones,” he said. “Everybody is pretty grief-stricken. Everyone’s
worried.”
Hours
after the shootings, the one-story church was sealed off to reporters,
with yellow tape posted around the church grounds. Far beyond the town,
the shooting shocked people throughout Texas, a state that is home to
some of the biggest churches in the country.
The First Baptist Church of La Vernia, about seven miles away, wrote on Facebook
that it would open its doors from 5 to 7 p.m. “There will be pastors
and leaders present to pray with you or to talk, and the altar will be
open for us to fall at the feet of Jesus,” the church wrote.
First
Baptist is a little church, albeit a tech-savvy one. The service at the
church last Sunday was posted on YouTube, one of several posted there.
Videos posted online show lyrics to the hymns appearing on television
screens with parishioners playing electric guitars and a sign language
interpreter translating the songs.
The
video of last Sunday’s service begins with a rendition of a song called
“Happiness Is the Lord.” Then the pastor, Frank Pomeroy, told his
parishioners — 20 to 30 were visible in the video — to walk around the
room and “shake somebody’s hand.”
“Tell them it’s good to see them in God’s house this morning,” Pastor Pomeroy said.
Correction: November 5, 2017
An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of a Wilson County commissioner. He is Albert Gamez Jr., not Gamaz.
An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of a Wilson County commissioner. He is Albert Gamez Jr., not Gamaz.
