Court records detail Lakewood shooter’s troubles
Gennesse Moreno’s life was filled with threats, a turbulent divorce and child custody battles that dragged on for years before she was fatally shot Sunday after allegedly walking into Lakewood Church with her 7-yearold son and opening fire, according to court records.
Civil and criminal court records in counties dotting the Houston region paint a troubled personal life for the woman who was shot and killed by off-duty law enforcement, an encounter that left another man wounded and her son clinging to life after being shot in the head.
Using several aliases, Moreno, 36, battled her ex-husband, Enrique Carranza, and his family over divorce and custody cases in Montgomery and Harris counties, according to court records.
She has a history of arrests and charges with several agencies, including Harris County Sheriff ’s Office and Katy Police Department.
Records show that during her legal battles, she had sought help from the very church she attacked.
In a May 2022 lawsuit affecting the child-parent relationship filed by her former mother-inlaw, Walli Carranza, Moreno and her mother were accused of “intentionally” keeping the boy from his father and their family.
Documents show that Moreno and her mother sought assistance from pastoral staff at the Lakewood Church regarding her legal battles.
Representatives for Lakewood Church said they were receiving requests for assistance, but hadn’t found anything under any of Moreno’s aliases.
She also didn’t appear in any volunteer records with the church, officials said.
A violent relationship
During a Montgomery County court hearing for the couple’s divorce in August 2021, Enrique Carranza testified that during their marriage Moreno didn’t want him around other women.
“She would have paranoia about other women when I would go to work, when I would go to school. So she would physically attack me and if I didn’t fight with her or I wouldn’t entertain the crazy notion of someone else interrupting our marriage,” Carranza said at the hearing. “So on multiple occasions (she) chased me out of the house with knives, hit me with cans and stabbed me with keys because I would just stand there and not — I wouldn’t fight back or I wouldn’t play into her concepts and so I had left so that I wouldn’t teach that to my son, that kind of violence. I didn’t want that around him and so that’s when we split,” he testified.
However, he said for about a month, the couple were together caring for the boy and taking him different places like parks and playgrounds.
He said she was scared to take the boy, who court records show suffered developmental and physical disabilities, anywhere by herself.
“She is paranoid schizophrenic,” he testified.
Carranza also testified at the 2021 hearing that the last time he saw his son was with Moreno in February 2020.
“We had gone to Colorado to visit my mother and about three weeks later, she wanted to go back to Texas, and so on our way back driving to Houston and then she changed her mind and says, OK, let’s go back to Colorado,” Carranza testified.
“And we — she gets in a fight with me about either it was — I’m not even sure but she pointed a gun on me so I got out of the car and she called the police, the
Wise police I believe, and they took her weapon but took me to the airport and that was the last time I seen him.”
Mother-in-law files suit
The May 2022 suit filed by Walli Carranza claims that the couples’ son was sleeping in the back of the car when she allegedly pointed the gun at her husband’s head.
Both Walli and Enrique Carranza stated in several court documents in Montgomery County that Moreno was moving around and they did not know where she or the boy were living.
Enrique Carranza told a judge the reason it took so long to file for divorce was because they couldn’t find her. In 2020, he hired an attorney to help locate her and start the divorce process. The couple’s divorce wasn’t finalized until May 2022.
“It took that long to actually, literally look in — because nothing is in her name, nothing is — she’s been running or hiding this whole time. So it took that long to find her and it took another year to serve her because she is literally trying to evade what’s happening,” Enrique Carranza testified.
Family filings in the couple’s marriage began in 2017, according to a review by Hearst Newspapers, with both husband and wife filing protective orders against each other, alleging emotional distress.
According to Montgomery County court documents, Moreno filed for protective orders twice in 2022 against her ex-husband, one in February and one in August. Moreno also filed a protective order against Carranza’s mother in July. All three cases were dismissed.
According to court documents, Enrique Carranza pleaded guilty in 2004 to attempted sexual assault of a child after a relationship with a 14-year-old girl in Colorado when he was 18.
Walli Carranza said her son was not aware the girl was underage. The girl, the documents state, provided a fake driver’s license and credit cards that showed she was 17.
Relationship with child
The 2022 child-parent relationship lawsuit filed by Walli Carranza raises multiple concerns about Moreno, who at the time was referred to as Jeffrey.
Carranza alleges Moreno was diagnosed multiple times with schizophrenia and had said she was not taking prescribed medications or following treatment recommendations made by her psychiatrist.
Walli Carranza said Moreno had “a history of constantly erratic, paranoid, stalking and mendacious behavior and was diagnosed as exhibiting Munchausen and Munchausen by proxy signs and symptoms.”
Munchausen syndrome is when someone fakes illness, abuse or other hardship to gain sympathy or aid. By proxy means they took on someone else’s misfortune as their own.
The suit goes on to allege that Moreno did not show attachment to her son, referring to him as “the boy” or “the child” and would not make eye contact with him. It also alleges a potentially abusive past.
“(Moreno) has been investigated four times by Child Protective Services for child abuse and neglect and was found by them to have intentionally harmed her child on at least two occasions,” the suit states.
Child Protective Services is investigating the shooting at Lakewood Church alongside law enforcement. The former mother-in-law hasn’t responded to a request for comment.
At one point, Moreno stored an unlocked, loaded handgun in her son’s diaper bag when he was 3 years old and did not enroll him in schools or intensive preschool programs.
Walli Carranza said in a Monday social media post she blamed CPS for not removing the 7-year-old from his mother’s custody, and a lack of red flag laws as contributors to the shooting.