Officials ID victims; answers sought on gunman’s phone
Authorities in Texas on Wednesday identified the 26 victims of the church massacre in Sutherland Springs, Texas, three days after a black- clad gunman stalked through the pews of First Baptist Church and killed or wounded nearly every member of the congregation during services.
The attack tore through the small community outside San Antonio, with the shooter targeting children, a pregnant woman and senior citizens alike. Among the victims in the church were eight men and 17 women. Seven of those killed were 14 or younger. Officials said the toll of 26 dead included the unborn child of Crystal Marie Holcombe, who was pregnant. The other victims were between 1 and 77 years old.
Some of those killed in the massacre had already been identified, their painful stories related by friends, relatives and public officials. The full list captured the full scale of an attack in which mothers threw themselves atop children to protect them, and one family — the Holcombes — suffered losses spanning three generations.
Investigators have spent the days since the shooting probing the background of Devin P. Kelley, the 26-yearold gunman, who left behind a volatile, sometimes violent life riddled with warning signs before entering the church.
Kelley, who killed himself after the rampage Sunday, had a string of troubling incidents in recent years, including a conviction for domestic assault, an escape from a mental health facility and reports that he made death threats against his military superiors.
Law enforcement officials in Texas, while not publicly identifying a motive for the attack, said it occurred while Kelley was having a conflict with his relatives, particularly his mother- in- law, who attended the church but was not there during the rampage. Kelley had sent her threatening text messages, said Freeman Martin, a regional director with the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Martin said more information about the dispute might be found on Kelley’s phone, which was recovered after the shooting, but so far, investigators say they have been unable to see what is on the device.
The FBI said they have taken the phone to their facility in Quantico, Virginia, but have been unable to unlock it. According to people familiar with the matter, Kelley had an iPhone, the same type of phone that was at the center of a protracted fight between the FBI and Apple over encryption after a previous shooting rampage.
In the wake of the December 2014 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, which killed 14 people and wounded 22 others, the FBI said it was unable to access an iPhone used by one of the two shooters. The federal government sought to force Apple to help unlock the phone but the tech giant refused, and the dispute boiled over into a very public and, at times, remarkably bitter back and forth about encryption and security.