Warrant identifies Texas church shooter
As afternoon services were beginning at Lakewood Church in Houston on Sunday, a woman arrived in a trenchcoat and carrying a backpack, her 7-year-old son at her side. She brought two rifles and had a piece of yellow rope resembling a detonation cord, law enforcement officials said Monday.
The woman pointed an AR15 at an unarmed security guard, officials said, and then made her way inside the church, which is led by televangelist Joel Osteen. Almost immediately, she opened fire in a hallway with the assault-style rifle.
As they provided new details of the shooting that rattled Lakewood Church, law enforcement officials said that what might have been a mass shooting inside one of the nation’s largest megachurches had been narrowly averted by a pair of off-duty officers working security at the church.
The officers — a Houston police officer and an agent from the state alcoholic beverage commission — confronted the woman, exchanged fire with her and killed her. Her son was also struck in the head by gunfire, officials said. He remained in critical condition Monday. A man in the church was also wounded.
Officials identified the woman as Genesse Ivonne Moreno, who lived in Conroe, Texas, north of Houston, and had a history of previous arrests, including one in 2022 on misdemeanor weapons charges. Chief Troy Finner of the Houston Police Department said she had “a mental health history that is documented.”
It was not clear what had drawn Moreno to the prominent megachurch located along a major Houston highway in a former NBA arena. But according to legal filings in her acrimonious divorce fight, her mother had once attended Lakewood.
Police also discovered “antisemitic writings” made by Moreno, said Christopher Hassig, the commander of the department’s homicide unit. The AR-15 carried a sticker with the word “Palestine” on its stock. He said the feelings expressed in her writings appeared to stem from disputes with her ex-husband’s family, some of whom are Jewish.
Osteen has hosted evangelistic events in Israel and, like many evangelical leaders, has expressed general solidarity with the country over the years.
Before she was shot and killed by the off-duty officers, the attacker at the church stated that she had a bomb, according to a search warrant for Moreno’s Conroe home. The officers said she was carrying a yellow cord that “appeared to be a detonation cord” that was “consistent with the manufacture of explosive devices.” The officers opened fire after she pointed her weapon at them, according to the warrant.
Police searched the shooting suspect’s one-story home Sunday night, according to a person familiar with the search. They were looking for firearms, computers and cellphones, as well as materials used to make explosives or a “hoax bomb,” according to the warrant.
Officials said during an earlier news conference Sunday that despite her statements and the fact that she had sprayed some sort of substance on the ground, the assailant did not have any explosives inside the church.
According to the warrant, the woman shot one man, whom officials have said was a bystander and did not appear to have been targeted. Finner said the police “don’t know” if the boy was shot by the woman or by the off-duty officers as they confronted her. Officials could not say if she had been using her son to shield herself or where he had been standing when the gunfire broke out.