Troubled past included divorce, run-ins with the law
NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas – The 26year-old gunman responsible for the deadly mass shooting at a Texas church had a long, troubled past before he carried out the attack on Sunday worshipers.
Investigators searched for insight into what could have led Devin Kelley to target the First Baptist Church in the small town of Sutherland Springs, Texas. Authorities noted he was embroiled in a domestic dispute with his wife’s family, but his in-laws were not at Sunday’s service.
“We can tell you that there was a domestic situation going on within his family,” said Texas Department of Public Safety regional director Freeman Martin. “The mother-in-law had attended this church. We know she had received threatening texts from him.”
President Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Kelley, accused of killing 26 people and wounding 20 others, suffered from mental health problems. They did not disclose the nature of his mental illness.
Outside the gunman’s family’s house in New Braunfels, about 40 miles from the Sutherland Springs church, the Comal County Sheriff ’s Office stood guard Monday as law enforcement officials conducted their investigation.
For the past month and a half, the gunman worked as an unarmed security guard at the Summit Vacation Re- sort in New Braunfels, the resort’s manager, Claudia Varjabedian, told USA TODAY.
“He worked the 4 (p.m.)-to-midnight shift,” she said. “Nobody ever really talked to him.
“There were no suspicions that he was capable of doing what he did,” Varjabedian said. “There’s no way we could have known that.”
This year, Kelley worked for five and a half weeks as an unarmed security guard at Schlitterbahn New Braunfels, park spokesperson Winter Prosapio said in an email. The water park in this San Antonio suburb is about 35 miles north of where Kelley conducted the largest mass shooting in Texas history.
Prosapio said Kelley’s background check “came back clean prior to his starting work,” but he was later terminated.
“He was not a good fit,” said Prosapio, who did not offer further details on the firing.
Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said Kelley served in Logistics Readiness at Holloman Air Force Base in southern New Mexico from 2010 until his discharge in 2014. After he was court-martialed in 2012 for assaulting his spouse and a child, he received a bad conduct discharge, was confined for 12 months at Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar in California and busted to the service’s lowest rank.
Kelley allegedly fractured the skull of his young stepson, said Don Christen- sen, the Air Force’s former chief prosecutor, whose office oversaw Kelley’s prosecution.
Kelley had another run-in with law enforcement in August 2014 while living in a Colorado mobile home park.
El Paso County authorities charged him with misdemeanor animal cruelty, charges which were dropped.
Four witnesses at the mobile home park said they saw Kelley repeatedly punch a white and brown husky, according to an El Paso County Sheriff ’s Department incident report.
“We were just getting set up in the RV park when we saw him running after his dog and tackle it like a football player,” witness Brent Moody said in an interview. “Then, he starts beating the dog. He was picking it up and hitting it in the face. I went over to confront him, and he jumped up. He had a 2-foot-long knife on him. You could tell he was whacked out. So we backed off and waited for the police.”
High school classmates described Kelley as an outsider.
Christopher Leo Longoria, who attended high school with the gunman in New Braunfels, recalled Kelley as “being socially awkward at times.”
“But nothing over the top,” Longoria wrote to USA TODAY. “He would just kind of go with the flow of being around others. He wasn’t popular, energetic or looking for attention. Just a different kid who stuck to himself.”
Kyomi Brooks, another high school classmate of Kelley, recalled him as “weird.”