Air Force on trial in church massacre
Military is accused of failing to block gun sales to shooter
Trial begins Wednesday in San Antonio in a lawsuit filed by more than three dozen families against the U.S. government over allegations that the Air Force is liable for the November 2017 massacre at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs that left 26 worshipers dead and 20 more injured.
According to plaintiffs' court filings, gunman Devin Kelley had threatened mass violence while in the Air Force, adding to the mounting allegations that the military branch dropped the ball by not placing his name in a national database that might have prevented him from legally purchasing guns, including an assault-style rifle he used in the Nov. 5, 2017, mass shooting.
The families said the Air Force failed on at least six other occasions to report information to an FBI database that gun dealers use when someone applies to purchase a firearm.
A Defense Department inspector general's report detailed Kelley's decade-long history of violence, interest in guns and menacing behavior toward women. Kelley, who served nearly five years in the Air Force, was courtmartialed and sentenced to oneyear of confinement for assaulting a former wife and stepson.
He was discharged in 2014 for bad conduct. Kelley shot and killed himself during a car chase after the mass shooting.
Despite the Air Force's public admissions, the federal government has been using a series of legal defenses, including citing the 1993 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which protects federal employees if they fail to prevent illegal firearm purchases.
The first phase of the trial is expected to last up to three weeks to determine if the government is liable.
The trial is not before a jury, but evidence and testimony is being heard by U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez. He is not expected to rule from the bench, but to issue his findings within weeks after the trial. Should he find the government liable, the case moves on to a second phase to determine damages, records
show.
Separately, the families also filed at least five lawsuits against Academy Sports & Outdoors in state court in Bexar County, alleging the retailer should not have sold him the assault rifle.
The cases have reached the Texas Supreme Court. In October, Academy said the federal
Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act grants immunity that protects the retailer from getting sued for selling weapons when the situation involved criminal conduct by another person. The state Supreme Court has not issued a ruling.
In the state lawsuits, the gunman's widow, Danielle Kelley, said in an affidavit that, in December 2015, she and Devin Kelley went to a Dick's Sporting Goods in New Braunfels, where he tried to buy a Ruger assault rifle he had been wanting for some time.
After looking over several guns, “he completed purchase paperwork there and the manager ... came over and declined to sell him the gun because of an ID issue,” Danielle Kelley said. Devin Kelley had only a Colorado driver's license but no Texas ID.
They never returned to Dick's, she said. Instead, in April 2016, they went to Academy Sports and Outdoors in Selma.
“There, he purchased a Ruger AR 556; that day he also purchased a magazine and ammunition. It was a quick and easy transaction,” she said.
He returned to that Academy store about once a month to buy more magazines and multiple boxes of ammunition.
In her affidavit, Danielle Kelley said her husband did not disclose his criminal background to her.
“If there was anything I could've done or intervened to prevent the shooting, I would've done it,” she said.
Since June 2020, three relatives of two victims killed in the mass shooting have died, and their estates may not be able to collect any damages, if any are awarded.