‘Why here?’ ask residents of small Texas town after mass shooting

SUTHERLANDSPRINGS:WITH just two gas stations, one post office and a few hundred residents, Sutherland Springs was too tiny to be incorporated as a city, but it became a focus of global attention on Sunday when it suffered the worst mass shooting in modern Texas history.

The heavily Christian community set amid farmlands and rolling hills about 65 km east of San Antonio is too small to have its own police force, and much of its social activity is centered on its two churches.

They include the modest, white-painted First Baptist Church, where a lone gunman burst in brandishing an assault rifle during a Sunday service and killed at least 26 parishioners.

“We wouldn’t believe that something like this would happen here,” Paul Buford, pastor of River Oaks Church, the other house of worship in Sutherland Springs, told reporters.

“We are holding up as well as we can. We are a strong community. We are strong in our faith and strong in believing that anyone that was killed in the church there is present with our Lord,” he said.

Authorities did not name the gunman, but the New York Times and other media cited unnamed law enforcement officials who said he was a white, 26-year-old man, Devin Patrick Kelley. Soon after the shooting, the suspect crashed his vehicle near the border of neighbouring Guadalupe County and was found dead inside with a cache of weapons.

In a small town like Sutherland Springs, everyone will be affected by the shooting, Buford said. Police said the youngest shooting victim was five years old. The massacre came only about a month after the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history when a gunman killed 58 people at a concert in Las Vegas.