Law enforcement officials said Devin Kelley may have been driven by anger toward his estranged wife’s family, the final chapter in a life full of domestic rage.
NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas — He beat his wife, cracked his toddler stepson’s skull and was kicked out of the military. He drove away friends, drew attention from police and abused his dog. Before Devin P. Kelley entered a rural Texas church with a military-style rifle, killing at least 26 people Sunday, he led a deeply troubled life in which few in his path escaped unscathed.
In 2012, while stationed at Holloman Air Force Base outside Alamogordo, Kelley was charged with assault, according to Air Force records, which said he had repeatedly struck, kicked and choked his first wife beginning just months into their marriage, and hit his stepson’s head with what the Air Force described as “a force likely to produce death or grievous bodily harm.”
“He assaulted his stepson severely enough that he fractured his skull,” said Don Christensen, a retired colonel who was the chief prosecutor for the Air Force, adding, “He pled to intentionally doing it.”
Prosecutors withdrew several other charges as part of their plea agreement with Kelley, including allegations that he repeatedly pointed a loaded gun at his wife.
He was ultimately sentenced in November that year to 12 months’ confinement and reduction to the lowest possible rank. His final duty title was “prisoner.”
His first wife, Tessa Kelley, divorced him while he was confined, and was awarded the couple’s only four household items of value: a television, an Xbox, a wedding ring and a revolver.
After his confinement, Devin Kelley was forced out of the military with a bad conduct discharge. The Air Force said the conviction should have barred Kelley from owning any guns. Instead, law enforcement officials say, he bought several.
Friends from New Braunfels, Texas, where he went to high school, expressed shock in the aftermath of the shooting, remembering how Kelley was a friendly, if awkward, teenager who grew up active in his church. His senior yearbook photo shows him smiling, with untamed hair and a Hollister T-shirt. But in recent years, friends said, he grew so dark that many unfriended him on Facebook.
“I had always known there was something off about him. But he wasn’t always a ‘psychopath,’ ” a longtime friend, Courtney Kleiber, posted on Facebook on Sunday. “We had a lot of good times together. Over the years we all saw him change into something that he wasn’t. To be completely honest, I’m really not surprised this happened, and I don’t think anyone who knew him is very surprised either.”
Instead of straightening out after his bad conduct discharge, Kelley began a long downward slide that culminated in the shooting Sunday.
After getting out of confinement, Kelly moved into a barn at his parents’ house, which they had converted into an apartment, according to the local sheriff’s office records.
During the next two years, he was investigated twice for abusing women. Authorities in Comal County, which includes Kelley’s hometown New Braunfels, released records Monday that showed he had been the subject of an investigation for sexual assault and rape in 2013.
The investigation ended without the filing of any charges — Kelley’s only skirmishes in the local courts were traffic violations.
Less than a year after the sexual assault report, deputies were summoned again after Kelley’s girlfriend at the time, Danielle Shields, reportedly sent a text message to a friend saying she was being abused. Deputies who responded told a dispatcher, according to the report, that it was a “misunderstanding and teenage drama.” Kelley married Shields two months later, local records show.
At the time of both episodes, Kelley’s appeals were still pending before military courts.
Kelley was finally discharged from the Air Force in 2014. He married Shields in April that year. Law enforcement officials described their relationship this week as “estranged.”
A few months after the wedding, the couple moved to Colorado Springs, Colo., where voter registration documents list his address as Parking Space 60 at a collection of trailers in a gravel lot called the Fountain Creek RV Park.
While in Colorado and Texas, Kelley purchased a number of guns at gun stores, according to law enforcement officials. On Monday, the Air Force admitted that it had failed to enter information from Kelley’s domestic violence court-martial into a federal database that could have blocked him from buying the weapon used in the church attack.
Kelley, whose father, Michael Kelley, is a computer programmer and accountant, enlisted in the Air Force soon after graduating from New Braunfels High School in 2009. Devin Kelley served as a low-ranking airman in a logistics readiness unit. A LinkedIn account in his name says he worked in cargo and distribution before his court-martial.
The account says that after the military, Kelley briefly worked as an aide at a youth Bible school in Kingsville, Texas, “helping their minds grow and prosper.”
Friends said on Facebook that in recent years, Kelley had become vocally anti-Christian, to the point where many stopped communicating with him. His Facebook page, which has been deleted, listed that he liked a number of atheist groups.