Gunman fired point- blank at crying children in church
The gunman who killed 26 people at a rural Texas church targeted churchgoers who made noise and shot crying children at point- blank range, survivors said.
Roseanne Solis told KSAT- TV in San Antonio that Sunday’s service at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs began amid smiles and joyous singing. Then, suddenly, tragedy.
“I hear firecrackers popping. Ta- tata,” Solis said. “Everybody started screaming, yelling. Everyone got down, crawling under wherever they could hide. It was so scary.”
The accounts from survivors came as details emerged Tuesday about the gunman, Devin Kelley.
Wilson County Sheriff Joe Tackitt said the church’s pastor, Frank Pomeroy, told him Kelley had attended services at the church before, including a recent festival. “The pastor told me he was here at the festival Halloween night, saw him in the crowd,” Tackitt said.
Kelley escaped from a behavioral health center in New Mexico in 2012 and made threats against his U. S. Air Force commanders, according to an El Paso Police Department incident investigation report.
He had allegedly been caught trying to sneak firearms onto Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo and attempted to “carry out death threats” that he hadmade against his “military chain of command,” the report states.
Kelley worked as a logistics readiness specialist at Holloman from2010 until his discharge in 2014, when he was convicted on domestic violence charges.
Authorities, who have said the rampage appeared to stem from a domestic situation, continued to investigate Kelley’s motivation and his ties to the church.
Solis, who was hit in the shoulder, said she and her husband, Joaquin Ramirez, were bloodied and played dead, watching as fellow parishioners were felled in the hail of bullets fired from outside.
When the shooting stopped, she thought police might have arrived. It was actually the gunman entering the church.
“Everyone was saying, ‘ Be quiet. It’s him. It’s him.’ Then he yelled out, ‘ Everybody die ( expletive),’ and he started shooting again,” she said.
Ramirez said he made eye contact with Pastor Frank Pomeroy’s 14- yearold daughter, Annabelle, who cried out for help.
He signaled with his finger for her to be quiet, knowing the gunman was listening for sounds and shooting whoever made them. Annabelle was among those killed. “The Lord saved me, because I know it was my last day,” Solis said.