Parishioners: Church gunman acted oddly

SUTHERLAND SPRINGS,

Less than a week TEXAS — before the Texas church massacre, the gunman who slaughtered more than two dozen people showed up at a festival dressed in black and acted so strangely that people kept a close eye on him, two longtime parishioners said Friday.

Devin Patrick Kelley “was completely distant and way out in thought,” recalled Judy Green. She and her husband said Kelley often exhibited troubling behavior.

At the fall festival held on Halloween night at the First Baptist Church, Kelley “didn’t even blink — he just stared,” she said.

Rod Green, a former law enforcement officer in Montana, said when he saw Kelley arrive in all black, he examined him closely to make sure he was not carrying a gun.

The Greens both have licenses to carry handguns, and they are friends with Kelley’s in-laws.

If Kelley had been carrying a weapon, Green said, he would have escorted him away because of all the children there. Judy Green said she positioned herself to keep an eye on Kelley at all times.

“There was something wrong with the picture,” she said. “I was thinking forward, and that was what was scaring me.”

Wi l son Co u nty Sheriff Joe Tackitt has said the church pastor saw Kelley in the crowd at the festival but that the pastor did not witness any behavior that raised alarms.