Tragic pastor in Tex. wants church gone

THE SICK shooter behind the Texas church massacre admired another deranged killer — Dylann Roof — and boasted about buying animals for “target practice,” one of his former Air Force supervisors said Thursday.

Jessika Edwards told CNN she served at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico with Devin Kelley between 2010 and 2012.

Years before Kelley stormed First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs last Sunday and killed 26 people, he raised numerous red flags, causing “problem after problem,” Edwards said.

He was reportedly thrilled after Roof opened fire in a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., and murdered nine worshipers in June 2015.

“He would say, ‘Isn’t it cool? Did you watch the news?’” Kelley remembered Edwards writing to her on Facebook in 2014, after they both were out of the service.

“He would say he wished he had the nerve to do it, but all he would be able to do is kill animals,” she said.

When Edwards was a staff sergeant, she sent a warning up the Air Force chain of command that Kelley, 26, would “shoot the place up” if they disciplined him too harshly for his numerous infractions.

Among her other memories of Kelley: an obsession with mass murders, a threat to kill himself amid severe depression, and a claim he bought dogs on Craigslist “for target practice.”

Edwards found the last admission so disturbing she stopped communicating with Kelley on social media.

She wrote in one of her last messages to him that he could call her if he ever felt like he was going to hurt himself or others. But he never called.

“It's upsetting because you feel like we failed,” Edwards told the network. “But in reality we did everything we possibly could do.”

The revelations only added to the portrait of Kelley as a deeply disturbed individual who had shown signs for years that he was dangerous and demented.

In 2012, Kelley was sentenced to 12 months confinement in the Air Force’s brig for beating his wife and stepson. He shook the toddler so hard he fractured the child’s skull.

While being investigated by the Air Force for the domestic violence case, Kelley escaped from a mental institution — but not before boasting to other patients that he’d recently gone on an online firearm shopping spree, according to reports.

Kelley was taking medication for depression, anxiety and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder at the time.

After serving his sentence he was kicked out of the Air Force for bad conduct.

In 2014, he was charged with animal cruelty for punching a dog several times.

The domestic violence conviction should have landed Kelley in an FBI database preventing him from being able to purchase a firearm.

The Air Force acknowledged Monday that it failed to enter Kelley’s criminal convictions into the database, as required by the Pentagon.

That allowed Kelley to pass background checks and buy the Ruger AR-556 he used in the church slaughter. in Sutherland, Texas, THE SMALL-TOWN Texas pastor whose teen daughter was among 26 victims slain in a mass shooting wants to tear down the church where the slaughter occurred.

The bullet-riddled First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs will be replaced by a memorial garden under the proposal by Rev. Frank Pomeroy, church officials said Thursday.

Pomeroy, in a meeting with high-level members of the Southern Baptist Convention, said the cozy white church was now “a very painful setting” and called for its demolition.

Charlene Uhl, whose 16-yearold daughter Hayley Krueger died in the massacre, agreed with the proposal. “Nobody should go back to that church again,” she said.

“We should still have the church, but elsewhere. This particular one should be gone. I think they need a new one.”

The building had deep significance to the community — and Hayley (top photo)— but now it is irreparably tainted.

“This church, it was part of everybody... She loved it, above anywhere else. It should not open again,” Uhl (bottom photo) said.

As churchgoers began to ponder a permanent memorial where the building stands, Uhl grieved before a row of wooden crosses honoring victims. One of the crosses featured a photo of Hayley, wearing a black-and-white bow.

“This is the most horrible thing ever. No parent should have to bury their child, especially this way,” Uhl said.

Roger Oldham, a Southern Baptist Convention spokesman, said no demolitions plans had been finalized.

“The church is the people, not a building,” Oldham said.

“We will support the pastor’s decision.”

Pomeroy’s 14-year-old daughter, Anabelle, was among the innocent, unarmed worshipers killed in the attack. The pastor and his wife were out of town. The gunman fired more than 400 bullets.

Under the plan, a new church will be constructed on property near the site of the old one. First Baptist had a congregation of roughly 100, with a quarter of them killed in the Sunday morning massacre.