Gunman was firing point-blank at crying children
Killer had attended house of worship before
“I hear firecrackers popping. Ta-tata. Everybody started screaming, yelling. Everyone got down, crawling under wherever they could hide.”
Roseanne Solis
The gunman who killed 26 people at a rural Texas church targeted churchgoers who made noise and shot crying children at point-blank range, survivors said.
Roseanne Solis told KSAT-TV in San Antonio that Sunday’s service at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs began amid smiles and joyous singing. Then, suddenly, tragedy.
“I hear firecrackers popping. Ta-tata,” Solis said. “Everybody started screaming, yelling. Everyone got down, crawling under wherever they could hide. It was so scary.”
The accounts from survivors came as details emerged Tuesday that gunman Devin Kelley may have been at the church before the massacre.
Wilson County Sheriff Joe Tackitt said Pastor Frank Pomeroy told him Kelley had attended services at the church before, including a recent festival. “The pastor told me he was here at the festival Halloween night, saw him in the crowd,” Tackitt said.
Inside the church Sunday, the scene was grim. Solis, who was hit in the shoulder, said she and her husband, Joaquin Ramirez, were bloodied and played dead, watching as fellow parishioners were felled in the hail of bullets fired from outside.
When the shooting stopped, she thought police might have arrived. It was actually the gunman entering the church.
“Everyone was saying, ‘Be quiet. It’s him. It’s him.’ Then he yelled out, ‘Everybody die (expletive),’ and he started shooting again,” she said.
Ramirez, who was hit by shrapnel, told the station the gunman shot the church’s camera crew — services are normally posted online — then moved to the center aisle toward the front. Aisle by aisle, the gunman fired away.
Farida Brown, 73, was hiding in the back pew, her son David told CNN. “She stayed on the ground the whole time — never saw him, just saw his boots as he walked around the church,” Brown said.
Ramirez said he made eye contact with Pomeroy’s 14-year-old daughter, Annabelle, who cried out for help. He signaled with his finger for her to be quiet, knowing the gunman was listening for sounds and shooting whoever made them.
Pomeroy was out of town Sunday. Annabelle was among those killed.
The gunman reached the back pew, where he shot the woman next to Farida Brown multiple times, David Brown said. His mother thought “her life was about to end,” but Kelley’s attention was drawn away, and he retreated to the front of the church, David said.
Ramirez said he finally crawled out of the church amid the smoke and gunfire and called 911.
“The Lord saved me, because know it was my last day,” Solis said.