Family dispute suspected in Texas shooting
Mass-killer had conviction that barred gun purchase
A family dispute may have sparked the rampage by a US Air Force veteran who killed 26 people with an assault rifle in a small-town church even though he was legally prohibited from buying guns, officials said Monday.
The latest US mass shooting again raised questions about gun control but President Donald Trump dismissed them and instead praised a gun-owner who opened fire in an effort to stop the killer.
Ten people remained in critical condition a day after Devin Patrick Kelley, a 26-year-old private security guard, burst into the rural Baptist church during Sunday morning services and sprayed bullets at the congregation.
The Pentagon said it would probe why the Air Force failed to enter a domestic violence conviction into a database that could have prohibited Kelley from purchasing weapons, such as the AR-15 rifle and two handguns he had in his possession.
Investigators were focusing on reports that Kelley had sent threatening text messages to his mother-in-law, who regularly attended the church but was not there during the assault.
Victims of the massacre included an unborn baby, an 18-month-old toddler, eight members of a single family, and reportedly the gunman’s grandmother-in-law. Twenty people were wounded.
The authorities said Kelley may have died of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head after using his car to flee the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, a rural community of rolling hills and ranches of nearly 400 people near San Antonio.
Two men – Stephen Willeford, 55, and Johnnie Langendorff, 27 – were lauded as heroes for confronting Kelley after he mowed down nearly 50 churchgoers with gunfire.
Willeford grabbed his own AR-15 rifle and shot and wounded Kelley as he emerged from the church and headed for his car.
Willeford then flagged down a passing pickup truck driven by Langendorff and they pursued Kelley at high speed until he crashed his vehicle into a field.
Commenting on the violence during a visit to South Korea, US President Donald Trump said that if the “very brave” Willeford had not been armed, “instead of having 26 dead, you would have had hundreds more dead.” Trump earlier said the latest shooting “isn’t a guns situation” but rather a “mental health problem at the highest level.”
Sunday’s carnage came five weeks after the worst gun massacre in modern US history, when a retired accountant opened fire on a country music concert in Las Vegas, killing 58 people.