Texas church gunman made threats to military superiors
SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas — The gunman who carried out the massacre of 26 people at a small-town Texas church got in trouble for bringing guns onto a military base and threatening his superiors there, police reports indicate and in 2012, briefly escaped from a mental health center in New Mexico.
Devin Kelley was also named as a suspect in a 2013 rape in his Texas hometown of New Braunfels, about 35 miles from the scene of the church attack.
The records that emerged Tuesday add up to at least three missed opportunities that might have offered law enforcement a way to
released Tuesday.
While in the military, Kelley, who was 21 at the time, made death threats against superior officers, according to the June 2012 report, which also mentioned the military charges. He was eventually sentenced to 12 months of confinement for the assault.
The Air Force acknowledged Monday that it did not enter Kelley’s criminal history into the federal database as required by military rules, another way he could have been denied a weapon.
Had Kelley been convicted of sexual assault, he would likely have been prevented from purchasing a gun because federal guidelines prohibit sales to anyone convicted of a felony punishable by more than one year in prison. The Comal County sheriff said he was reviewing whether his department mishandled the sexual assault investigation.
Authorities recovered a Ruger AR-556 rifle at the church and two handguns from the shooter’s vehicle. All three weapons were purchased by Kelley, said Fred Milanowski, the agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Houston.
The El Paso report notes that Kelley was committed to a mental health facility in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, but at some point escaped and was later found by police at a bus station in downtown El Paso in June 2012.
Meanwhile at the First Baptist Church in tiny Sutherland Springs, investigators continued analyzing a gruesome crime scene and tried to gain access to the shooter’s cell phone, a longstanding challenge for the FBI in thousands of other cases.
Authorities aimed to conclude the crime-scene investigation at the church by Wednesday evening.
Also Tuesday, authorities explained that the death toll of 26 included the unborn baby of one of the women killed. That added to the account of a couple who survived the attack — they said Kelley went aisle to aisle looking for victims and shot crying babies at point-blank range.