Gunman once escaped from N.M. psychiatric facility
Records show Kelley was at hospital in 2012 after pleading guilty to assaulting wife, stepson
SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas — The gunman behind the worst mass shooting in Texas history escaped from a psychiatric hospital while he was in the Air Force, and was caught a few miles away by local police, who were told that he had made death threats against his superiors and tried to smuggle weapons onto his base, a 2012 police report showed.
That episode, which came to light Tuesday, was another in a series of red flags raised about the man, Devin P. Kelley, his instability and the threat he might pose to those around him. But none of the warnings stopped Kelley from legally purchasing several firearms, including the rifle he used to kill 26 people at the First Baptist Church
of Sutherland Springs on Sunday.
According to an El Paso Police Department report from June 2012, officers took Kelley, then 21, into custody at a bus station in downtown El Paso, where he apparently planned to flee on a bus after
escaping from Peak Behavioral Health Services, a hospital a few miles away in Santa Teresa. He had gone to Peak Behavioral, whose services include a program for military personnel, after being charged in a military court with assaulting his wife and baby stepson, charges he later pleaded guilty to.
The report filed by El Paso officers says that the person who reported Kelley missing from the hospital advised them that he “suffered from mental disorders,” and that he “was attempting to carry out death threats” against “his military chain of command.” The man “was a danger to himself and others as he had already been caught sneaking firearms onto Holloman Air Force Base,” it added. The police report was first obtained by KPRC, a Houston television station.
Federal law prohibits gun possession by anyone who “has been committed to any mental institution,” which occurs after a legal process, but it was unclear if that had happened to Kelley. The Air Force said that Kelley had been taken to the
hospital while he was jailed on the assault charges, and that it was still reviewing records of his case.
But Kelley had clearly been troubled for years. His public school records released on Tuesday showed he had been suspended at least seven times, and a classmate said he had complained about medication he was taking.
Months after his escape from the psychiatric hospital, Kelley pleaded guilty in a military court to repeated assaults on his first wife and her son, a toddler, including one that left the boy with a fractured skull. He was sentenced to a year in confinement.
That conviction should have barred him from buying firearms, but instead, he was able to buy several, passing a background check each time. Federal law prohibits gun purchases by people who have been convicted of domestic violence, but the Air Force admitted on Monday that it had failed to report Kelley’s case to the federal databases used for such background checks. The Air Force said it was investigating whether other convictions had also been left unreported.
There were other signs of trouble for Kelley, who received a bad conduct discharge from the Air Force after finishing his sentence. In 2013, he was investigated by the Comal County Sheriff ’s Office on a complaint of rape and sexual assault in New Braunfels, Texas, his hometown, but no charges were filed. A spokeswoman for the sheriff ’s office said on Tuesday that the investigation had “stalled sometime in October 2013 for reasons yet to be determined.”
Kelley then moved to a recreational vehicle park in Colorado Springs, where four witnesses told police that they had seen Kelley chase down his white-and-brown Siberian husky and punch the dog four or five times, yelling at it, before dragging it into his camper, according to a report from the sheriff ’s office in El Paso County, Colo. Kelley was charged with animal cruelty, pleaded guilty and received a deferred sentence, records show.
Brent Moody, a neighbor who called the police, said in an interview that he and his wife moved out sooner than they would have liked because they were scared of Kelley. “In his eyes, he looked like there was intense anger,” Moody said. “Something didn’t seem right with him.”
On Sunday morning, Kelley took a Ruger AR-556 assault rifle to the First Baptist Church and opened fire, killing 26 people and wounding at least 20 others. After a shootout outside the church with a bystander, in which he was hit twice, Kelley raced away in his car, chased by the bystander and another man, and soon crashed. He was found dead, having shot himself in the head.
Officials have said that the massacre may have stemmed from acrimony between Kelley and the family of his estranged second wife. His mother-in-law, who attended the church, was not there on Sunday, but his wife’s grandmother was among those killed.
On Capitol Hill on Tuesday, the debate over the Texas shooting fell predictably along party lines, with Democrats calling for more gun safety legislation and Republicans resisting. But there was one notable exception: the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, John Cornyn of Texas, said he has begun work on a measure that would improve reporting to the background check system used for gun purchases.
“Obviously if things like this can happen in spite of the law then we need to look at that and try to fix it the best we can,” Cornyn told reporters, adding, “This is one of those areas of consensus on a very contentious topic.”
But on the other side of the Capitol, House Speaker Paul Ryan said no new legislation was needed. “The laws we have right now on the books say a person like this should not have gotten a gun,” Ryan said. “So this speaks to making sure that we actually enforce our laws that we have on the books.”