Killer’s rocky past included divorce, run- ins with the law
NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas – The 26- year- old gunman responsible for the deadly mass shooting at a Texas church had a long, troubled past before he carried out the attack on Sunday worshipers.
Investigators searched for insight intowhat could have led Devin Kelley to target the First Baptist Church in the small town of Sutherland Springs, Texas. Authorities noted he was embroiled in a domestic dispute with his wife’s family.
Outside the gunman’s family’s house in New Braunfels, about 40 miles from the Sutherland Springs church, the Comal County Sheriff’s Office stood guard Monday as lawenforcement officials conducted their investigation.
For the past month and half, the gunman worked as an unarmed security guard at the Summit Vacation Resort in New Braunfels, the resort’s manager, Claudia Varjabedian, told USA TODAY.
“He worked the 4 ( p. m.)- to- midnight shift,” she said. “Nobody ever really talked to him.”
This year, Kelley worked for five and a half weeks as an unarmed security guard at Schlitterbahn New Braunfels, park spokesperson Winter Prosapio said in an email.
Prosapio said Kelley’s background check “came back clean prior to his starting work,” but he was later terminated.
“Hewas not a good fit,” said Prosapio, who did not offer further details on the firing.
Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said Kelley served in Logistics Readiness at Holloman Air Force Base in southern New Mexico from 2010 until his discharge in 2014.
After he was court- martialed in 2012 for assaulting his spouse and a child, he received a bad conduct discharge, was confined for 12 months and busted to the service’s lowest rank.
He divorced from Tessa Kelley in October 2012, New Mexico court records show. He later remarried.
Kelley had another run- in with law enforcement in August 2014 while living in a Colorado mobile home park.
El Paso County authorities charged him with misdemeanor animal cruelty, charges which were dropped.
Four witnesses at the mobile home park said they saw Kelley repeatedly punch a white and brown husky, according to an El Paso County Sheriff’s Department incident report.
High school classmates described Kelley as an outsider. Christopher Leo Longoria, who attended high school with the gunman in New Braunfels, recalled Kelley as “being socially awkward at times.”
“But nothing over the top,” Longoria wrote to USA TODAY.
Investigators tried to determine whether Kelley could legally possess a weapon after his bad conduct discharge fromthe military in 2014. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Kelley owned four guns.