Trial begins over church massacre
The gunman in the Sutherland Springs massacre appeared to have been planning the shooting months before he stormed the First Baptist Church on Nov. 5, 2017, and sprayed worshipers with an assault rifle, killing 26 people and injuring 20 more, according to testimony in a federal trial that began Wednesday.
Devin Kelley bought body armor, 100-round “drum” magazines for the rifle and made notes to himself in his iphone to prepare, including notations to delete his social media accounts, destroy his phones and leave his dog tags for his son.
“I am the angel of death no one can stop me,” Kelley wrote in one note displayed in court Wednesday.
The revelations came during a civil trial over a lawsuit filed against the federal government by survivors and families of victims of that tragedy, one of Texas’ worst mass shootings.
The suit alleges the Air
Force negligently failed to flag Kelley’s felony conviction for domestic violence in a national database that might have prevented him from legally buying the assault rifle.
Kelley, who served nearly five years in the Air Force beginning in 2009, was court-martialed and sentenced to one year of confinement for assaulting a former wife and stepson, cracking the child’s skull. He was discharged in 2014 for bad conduct.
The Air Force has publicly admitted not placing information about the felony, including his name and fingerprints, in a national FBI database that gun dealers check during firearm purchases.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs steered testimony in the non-jury trial toward their theory that Kelley had a history of violence and preferred to buy guns from licensed dealers, and that the Air Force could have prevented the massacre by flagging him in the FBI database.
Government lawyers tried to sway U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez that Kelley would have gotten guns any other way, even if his background had been flagged by the Air Force. They also argue that certain laws shield government employees from liability.
The families are seeking unspecified damages for loss of their relatives, while some have said they want the Air Force blunder to never happen again — that it does its job and flag service members who should be barred from legally buying guns.
Kelley’s widow, Danielle Smith, opened the trial by painting him as controlling and violent, though he could seem caring and gentle at other times. On the stand, Smith said she was unaware of his violent past that got him booted from the service. Smith said Kelley was persistent in courting her, until she finally relented and married him after he left the Air Force. They had two children.
Smith said she wound up as Kelley’s prisoner, “trash” and “punching bag.” He was abusive and even locked her in a storage building that had been turned into an apartment — where the pair lived — on his parents’ property in a rural part of New Braunfels. The pair also lived at times in Colorado, where Kelley had been stationed, because Kelley could easily buy marijuana there.
If she broke his rules, such as talking to people without his permission, she would suffer consequences, she said. He kicked her in the stomach during their relationship, making her lose a baby, she said.
“Punishments ranged from levels. He’d give me a hand sign,” Smith said. “He’d just tap his arm, which meant a warning. One finger meant I’d get something taken. Two fingers meant I’m getting hit. If he put all his fingers on there, it meant I was going to get beaten until he made me pass out.”
Smith said that, in November or December of 2015, Kelley tried to buy an assault rifle at Dick’s Sporting Goods in New Braunfels, but was rebuffed because he had a Colorado driver’s license.
In April 2016, they went to Academy Sports and Outdoors in Selma, where, after a background check, he was allowed to buy a Ruger AR 556, magazines and bullets, she said.
“The background check came back pretty quickly,” Smith said. “It was quick.”
He returned to that Academy store about once a month to buy more magazines and multiple boxes of ammunition, and he would shoot the gun at his parent’s property, making her pick up the shells, Smith testified.
As their marriage and Kelley’s mental state continued to deteriorate through 2017, he showed her a video of him having sex with another woman, a few days before the shooting, Smith said.
She said she had enough and asked for a divorce. The morning of the shooting, he was quiet, but asked for a light breakfast. She prepared him pigs-in-a-blanket and he vomited.
After breakfast, he put a gun to her head, dragged her to their bed, handcuffed her and hogtied her. He put on dark clothing, body armor, which Smith said she didn’t know he had, and a mask. He slung his assault rifle on his shoulder and told their 2year-old boy, Michael, he would be back.
Hours later, Kelley’s parents forced their way in to the makeshift apartment, after Kelley had apparently called them to let them know Smith was tied up in there.
“They asked me, ‘What did I do?’ ” Smith said.
At the time, Smith said, Kelley had called his parents and told them where to find the handcuff key to free Smith. He also said he had shot a lot of people and that he had been shot himself, Smith recounted.
He then told Smith to take him off speaker phone.
“He told me he loved me. He blamed me and said it was my fault,” Smith said, crying. “And he shot himself.”
Kelley killed himself during a car chase after the mass shooting.
But the government’s lawyers countered that there was evidence Kelley was trying to obtain firearms and related items on the internet, including how to make silencers, sometimes years before the shooting. They said he was obsessed with guns and church shootings after white supremacist Dylan Roof shot and killed nine people in June 2015 at a church in Charleston, S.C..
The government, citing investigative reports of the Sutherland Springs case, Kelley’s icloud account and social media, noted Kelley visited gun shows and obtained guns from other individuals. They also disputed Smith’s claim that Kelley decided to shoot up the church, which Smith had not attended since she was 18, because he blamed relatives there for trying to convince Smith to end the marriage.
During cross-examination of Texas Ranger Terry Snyder, the lead investigator of the Sutherland Springs shooting, government lawyer Paul Stern showed a series of notes and investigative reports to support their case. Several photos from his social media pages showed Kelley pointing guns at the camera, including what is believed to have been the assault rifle used in the massacre. In some, he was wearing some of the clothing and gear that he apparently wore during the shooting.
In one police report, investigators summarized what was in the icloud account: “The notes included reminders of getting ammo, deleting old iphones, clearing his social media accounts, etc. The dates these relevant notes were created indicate he had planned the shooting for quite some time, as early as July 2017.”
“Get a pack for more ammo Get more pmags,” read one note.
“So, on Oct. 26, he was making notes to get organized and get more gear?” Stern said.
Without waiting for a clear answer, Stern moved on to another of Kelley’s notes, a list that included: “Delete instagram!!! And fb.” It also said “Destroy Phone” and to “clear” Youtube and his browser.
Snyder, meanwhile, testified earlier that his agency, the FBI, and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were all surprised to learn three days after the shooting that Kelley had been convicted of a felony for domestic violence while he was in the Air Force.
Snyder acknowledged that the felony conviction, had it been put into the FBI database by the Air Force, could have prevented Kelley from buying guns from licensed firearms dealers, but also from possessing body armor.
Snyder’s testimony continues Thursday morning.
The bench trial is expected to last up to three weeks. Judge Rodriguez will determine if the government is liable, and if so, the matter will proceed to a trial on damages.