The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Man kills estranged wife, her boyfriend outside Calif. church
He then went home and fatally shot himself in head.
Manuel Garcia was waiting for his estranged wife and her new boyfriend when they came out of church in the Central California city of Fresno, authorities said.
The Garcias had raised four children in 43 years of marriage — but a month ago, Martha Garcia filed for divorce, Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer told reporters. Shortly after, Martha Garcia told family and friends that there was a new man in her life.
The new couple had attended a 7:30 a.m. Mass at St. Alphonsus Church on Sunday.
An hour later, officers were called to the church parking lot, where they found the couple in a car, both with gunshot wounds to the head.
Martha Garcia was dead. Her boyfriend, whose identity has not been released, died a little while later.
Manuel Garcia, authorities said, had killed them both.
The shooting was the first deadly act of violence at an American house of worship on Sunday.
It shocked the Fresno community, but received little attention outside of the region, soon eclipsed by the mass killing of 26 churchgoers in a Texas town 1,600 miles away.
Investigators in Texas say a man walked into the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Sunday afternoon wearing all black and carrying a Ruger assaultstyle rifle, and mowed down more than two dozen people. The death toll stood at 26 after the massacre, but the figure could change.
Police are still searching for a motive in the shooting, which in an instant became perhaps the worst mass killing at a church in the nation’s history. The attacker — described as a former member of the Air Force — fired upon the people at the service before he came under fire from a local man and fled in a car chase.
He then ran off the roadway and apparently took his own life. Texas officials, early Monday, identified the attacker as Devin Patrick Kelley, of New Braunfels, about 35 miles north of Sutherland Springs.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and families of today’s murderous attack in Sutherland Springs, Texas,” President Donald Trump said in a Sunday-night statement. “This horrible act of evil occurred as the victims and their families were in their place of sacred worship. We cannot put into words the pain and grief we all feel, and we cannot begin to imagine the suffering of those who lost the ones they loved. Our hearts are broken.”
In Fresno, churchgoers at St. Alphonsus were dealing with a shooting outside their own sanctuary.
Curious at the sound of gunfire, they had peered outside.
“So when we went there and other people went there I saw the lady dead in the car so she was shot dead, and the other man was on the floor there, a lot of blood,” Dominic Rajappa, a priest, told ABC affiliate KFSN.
Authorities said it appeared the people in the car didn’t know their killer was there until it was too late.
Manuel Garcia fled the scene, police said, but didn’t go far: Shortly after the shooting, his daughter called police saying she had received text messages from her father. He was at home and claimed he’d killed her mother, and was planning to take his own life, KFSN reported.
Responding officers outside his home on California Avenue tried to make contact with the man, but he wouldn’t respond. The only person he was communicating with was his daughter, who was still receiving text messages.
As they tried to figure out what to do, they heard a gunshot from inside the home.
A police robot sent into the house located Manuel Garcia — dead of a gunshot wound to the head, the weapon still in his hand.
At the Catholic church in downtown Fresno, parishioners tried to make sense of the sudden outbreak of violence outside their sanctuary.
“We are people of God, and we need to love God,” Rajappa said. “We need to love our neighbor. We need to teach our people with dignity. Violence, enmity, violence, hatred — there’s no place.”