CHURCH SHOOTING PROBABLY TRIGGERED BY FAMILY DISPUTE
Trump says tragedy isn’t a guns situation
SUTHERLAND SPRINGS (TEXAS)
AFAMILY dispute may have sparked the rampage by a United States 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 on Monday.
Ten people remained in critical condition a day after Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, who was a 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 would have prohibited Kelley from buying 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 18month-old toddler, eight members of a family and reportedly the gunman’s grandmother-in-law.
Twenty people were wounded.
President Donald Trump, who is travelling in Asia, said the US was living in “dark times”.
But he brushed off calls for stricter gun control, saying the tragedy “isn’t a guns situation”, but rather a “mental health problem at the highest level”.
The authorities said Kelley might 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.
Kelley, who was kicked out of the military for assaulting his wife and stepson, was dressed in black and wore a bulletproof vest and a black mask with a skull face when he walked up and down the aisle of the church shooting people in the pews, officials said.
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 AR15 rifle and shot and wounded Kelley as he emerged from the church and headed for his car.
Willeford flagged down a passing pickup truck driven by Langendorff and they pursued Kelley at high speed until he crashed his vehicle into a field.
Freeman Martin of the Texas Department of Public Safety said 10 people were in critical condition, including four categorised as serious, and six as stable.
“This was not racially motivated. It wasn’t over religious beliefs,” Martin said.
“There was a domestic situation going on with the family and inlaws... We know he expressed anger towards his mother-in-law.”
Governor Greg Abbott said Kelley was “a man who had some mental health issues apparently long before this”.
According to the Air Force, Kelley served at a base in New Mexico starting in 2010 before being court martialled in 2012.
He was sentenced to 12 months in confinement and received a “bad conduct” discharge in 2014, Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said. AFP