Investigators fault Air Force for failing to report gunman

HOUSTON — The Air Force failed six times to report information that could have prevented the ex-airman who killed 26 people in a Texas church from purchasing a gun, according to a government report.

The Department of Defense inspector general’s report released Friday details Devin Patrick Kelley’s decade-long history of violence, interest in guns and menacing of women. That history culminated in Kelley’s November 2017 attack on the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, the church his wife and mother-in-law attended. The dead included several children, a pregnant woman and a 77-year-old grandfather.

Kelley served almost five years in the Air Force, during which he was court-martialed and sentenced to one year’s confinement for assaulting his wife and stepson. He was able to purchase four firearms after being discharged in 2014, three of which he carried into the church.

The Air Force was blamed after the shooting for not reporting the assault to the FBI. The conviction would have been a red flag in the mandatory background check when Kelley tried to purchase a gun.

The report says Air Force investigators who spoke to Kelley failed four separate times to fingerprint him and turn those prints over to the FBI. The report also says the Air Force failed twice to submit its final report of the case to the FBI.

Air Force investigators were not trained to submit fingerprints or the final report to the FBI, the inspector general found. The Air Force squadron that investigated the assault “used on-the-job training as its primary method of instruction for fingerprint collection and submission,” the report says. “However, this training was insufficient.”

The Air Force said in a statement that “corrective action has already been taken.” It has reviewed all case files since 1998, and “all criminal history reporting requirements that would preclude someone from purchasing a firearm have been updated.”

Kelley, 26, was dressed all in black and wearing a face mask when an armed bystander outside the church fired at him. Kelley, who was struck in the leg and torso, made it back to his car and led the bystander in a chase that ended in a crash, with Kelley dead behind the wheel. He had shot himself in the head. Nomaan Merchant is an Associated Press writer.