‘Domestic situation’ is said to have spurred church gunman
SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas — Law enforcement officers investigating the mass shooting at a church that killed 26 people here said Monday that “a domestic situation” within the gunman’s family may have motivated the killing.
“The suspect’s mother-in-law attended this church,” Freeman Martin, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said during a news conference Monday morning. “We know that he had made threatening texts and we can’t go into detail into that domestic situation that is continuing to be vetted and thoroughly investigated.”
“This was not racially motivated, it wasn’t over religious beliefs, it was a domestic situation going on,” Martin added.
The moments following the horrific mass shooting Sunday morning came into clearer view Monday, as the county sheriff detailed a firefight and car chase that ended with the gunman, Devin P. Kelley, 26, dead after a crash.
The recurrent bursts of gunfire were the first sign of trouble at the First Baptist Church in this rural Texas town, but even that said little about the horrors that had befallen the faithful at their house of worship. Inside, pools of blood splattered across the small church led back to dozens of dead and dying parishioners.
As many as 14 children and a pregnant woman lay lifeless. Those dead inside the church ranged from 18 months to 77 years of age, according to law enforcement officials.
Sheriff Joe Tackitt of Wilson County said that law enforcement found “blood everywhere” inside the church. “Wherever you walked in the church, there was death,” he said.
Sheriff Tackitt said he believed the gunman went around the outside of the church firing rounds before entering and shooting at parishioners. After he left the church, he and an armed bystander