Family dispute may have sparked Texas church shooting

SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, United States —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 yesterday.

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 would 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 18month-old toddler, eight members of a single family, and reportedly the gunman's grandmother-in-law. Twenty people were wounded.

President Donald Trump, who is traveling in Asia, said the United States was living in "dark times."

But he brushed off calls for stricter gun control, saying the latest tragedy "isn't a guns situation" but rather a "mental health problem at the highest level."