SHERIFF DESCRIBES CHURCH KILLINGS AS METHODICAL
engaged in a brief firefight before Kelley got into his vehicle, according to the sheriff. The gunman had dropped his rifle in the church after slaughtering the parishioners; he pulled a pistol during his exchange with the bystander.
Kelley contacted his father from his cellphone during the chase to tell him that he had been shot, according to law enforcement. Kelley told his father that he “didn’t think he was going to make it.” He subsequently shot himself, though officials said they were not yet sure if that shot had caused his death.
Left behind at the church alongside the bodies were 30-round magazines and “dozens of rounds” of ammunition, potentially hundreds. The sheriff said he had seen nothing to suggest that the gunman had modified his weapon to make it act like an automatic firearm, like the gunman in the mass shooting in Las Vegas who had used a “bump stock.”
The sheriff described a horrific and methodical killing. Kelley appeared to have begun at the front of the church, having “shot his way in,” and fired his weapon from side to side as he paced through the room.
“There was nothing anyone could do until he came out,” Tackitt said. The sheriff later declined to give more information about what had happened inside the church.
The bystander — whom Tackitt called a “hero” but declined to give his name — waved down a man in a vehicle and the two began pursuing the gunman, Tackitt said in an interview with CBS. They may have engaged in a firefight along the way before the gunman’s vehicle crashed into a fence.
Johnnie Langendorff, the driver, said in an interview with local ABC News television affiliate KSAT that he sprang to action after he encountered the two men exchanging gunfire. After the armed bystander explained the situation, the two took off after the gunman. “He got a little bit of a jump on us. We were doing about 95” — miles per hour — “around traffic and everything. Eventually he came to a slowdown and we got within just a few feet of him and he got off the road.”
Langendorff said that the gunman lost control of his vehicle. Langendorff parked and the armed bystander drew his rifle, which he kept trained on the gunman’s vehicle until police officers arrived about five minutes later, he said. The two men had been on the phone with police dispatch during the chase.
Kelley’s in-laws were interviewed by investigators Sunday night in Sutherland Springs. They were not in the town at the time of the shooting, according to law enforcement officials.
Kelley was clad all in black, with a ballistic vest strapped to his chest and a military-style rifle in his hands, when he opened fire on parishioners, turning this tiny town east of San Antonio into the scene of the country’s newest mass horror.
He had served in the Air Force at a base in New Mexico but was court-martialed in 2012 on charges of assaulting his wife and child. He was sentenced to 12 months’ confinement and received a “bad conduct” discharge in 2014, according to Ann Stefanek, the chief of Air Force media operations.
Kelley did not have a license to carry, according to investigators who briefed the news media Monday morning, but he had a private security license “similar to a security guard at a concert,” according to investigators. Three weapons belonging to Kelley were recovered during the investigation — a rifle at the church and two handguns in his car.