Just a month after the horrific slaughter
in Las Vegas which resulted in the assault gun mass murder of 58 concert-goers
and non-lethal shooting injuries to over 500 additional victims, on a bright Sunday
morning, 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley, a white man from New Braunfels,
Texas, fired his own assault weapon, killing and wounding worshippers at the modest
First Baptist Church of nearby Sutherland Springs.
Kelley was dressed in a ski mask with a
white skull face and all-black tactical gear including a ballistic vest as he
opened fire three days ago from the back of the church using a Ruger AR-556
rifle to murder at least 26 church members and their families ranging in age
from 18 months to 77 years.
The dead included eight members of one
family, the 14-year-old daughter of the church’s pastor Frank Pomeroy (who was
away during the onslaught), and an eight-months’ pregnant woman and three of
her children—the most in any church shooting in America. At least 20 other
people from ages five to 72 were injured, with ten of these victims remaining
hospitalized in critical condition.
Seven percent of the tiny town of
Sutherland Springs is now dead from the attack.
The church was so badly damaged by
Kelley’s 450 fired rounds of ammunition that it may never be rebuilt.
During the shooting a neighbor confronted
and shot Kelley twice outside the church, flagging down a passing pickup truck,
and the neighbor and truck driver then followed Kelley as he managed to drive
off at high speed into Guadalupe County, Texas.
The shooter eventually crashed his
vehicle into a ditch 11 miles later, and was found dead by a shot from his own
gun. Kelley had texted his father during the chase that he’d “been shot and
didn’t think he was going to make it.”
Hence, the arc of the original shooting
incident had concluded as the neighbor and truck driver followed Kelley as far
as he could go, determined to keep him in sight and eventually summoning law
enforcement when Kelley could go no further.
The central question remains: Who was
Devin Patrick Kelley, the man who committed the most lethal rampage of church
murders in modern American history?
Kelley had graduated from New Braunfels High
School in Texas in 2009 and enlisted in the Air Force in 2010, serving at
Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico in logistics readiness.
He was court-martialed in 2012 on two
counts of assaulting his first wife and her young son. Court records indicate
that, on June 21, 2011 and April 27, 2012, “he unlawfully struck, choked, kicked and pulled the hair of his
wife and struck her young child ‘with a force likely to produce death or
grievous bodily harm.’” Court records reveal that the young boy sustained a
skull fracture with a brain hematoma.
Following the assaults, Kelley had been
confined to the Peak Behavioral Health Services hospital in Santa Teresa, New
Mexico, “but escaped and was detained without incident.” As reported in The Guardian,
officers were advised that Devin Kelley had been “caught sneaking weapons on to
a military base and planning to carry out death threats made to his commanding
officers.”
Hence, Kelley was characterized as being a
danger to his family and to the military, which should have been all the
warning necessary to protect the community.
After his court-martial convictions Kelley
served a year of military confinement, following which he received a bad
conduct discharge from the Air Force and had his rank reduced effective 2014.
During Kelley’s imprisonment, his first
wife obtained a divorce in New Mexico.
After his discharge, Kelley briefly
resided in El Paso County, Colorado, where he was subsequently charged with
animal cruelty for beating a Husky dog.
Eventually, Devin Kelley established a
residence in New Braunfels, Texas, on property owned by his parents with a
secluded home on wooded farmland. He remarried and lived with his second wife
and two-year-old son behind the spacious family home in a barn.
Kelley found employment in the summer of
2017 as an unarmed night security guard at a local water park, passing a Texas
criminal background check. He was fired soon after because, said a spokeswomen,
Kelley was “not a good fit.”
Previously, Kelley had also passed a
background check that allowed him to work briefly for a local Texas grocery
chain, but he had quit after two months.
Kelley
maintained a Facebook page which showed a photo of a Ruger assault-style rifle
like the one that was used in the Sutherland Springs shootings. After the
shootings, “[f]ormer high school classmates of Kelley took to their own
Facebook pages in shock, describing him as a social outcast whom some had
blocked or deleted from their social networking because he sent inappropriate
or aggressive messages.”
A high school classmate of Kelley
recounted his recent decision to “unfriend” Kelley on Facebook because he was
posting “volatile atheistic messages” and veiled threats against his current
wife and her family, as well as other abusive comments.
Kelley’s cellphone, now in the possession
of the FBI, is locked and inaccessible to investigators, who are attempting to
learn what other communication clues are contained within that phone.
By the time of yesterday’s shooting,
Kelley had amassed at least four weapons by purchases in Colorado and Texas
including three handguns, two of which were found in his car, a Glock 9 mm and
a Ruger 22 mm. He had also acquired hundreds of rounds of ammunition and
tactical body gear. For none of these purchases—including one weapon each year
from 2014 through 2017—were there disqualifying “red flags” sent to the dealers
by the Department of Defense.
All the purchases were made possible by
the fact that the Air Force failed to send notice of Kelley’s disqualifying bad
conduct discharge to the FBI’s National Instant
Criminal Background Check System, or NIC. It appears that this oversight has become
endemic among the armed services, and hence that a substantial number of
military notices for other offenders have not been forwarded for entry into the
NIC system, permitting future would-be shooters to purchase weapons without difficulty.
Kelley had purchased his deadliest
weapon—his assault rifle—at a San Antonio gun store without including
information about his Air Force convictions on his application, which should
have disqualified him from buying the rifle had a routine background check
response from NIC been received by the gun dealer.
Kelley’s home has been secured and is
being carefully searched by ATF and other law enforcement for weapons, ammunition,
and incendiary devices. His neighbors have described a series of loud gunshots
and explosions that emanated from the home in recent weeks and months.
It appears that Devin Kelley did not wound
or kill just about all the people present in the Sutherland Springs church on
Sunday morning because of racial differences (the shooter and victims were
apparently all white) or religious fervor (Kelley had evolved into an atheist).
Rather, the most “ordinary” retributive reason
that propelled Kelley to attack the Sutherland Springs church was simply that
his current wife and her parents often attended services there and were his intended
victims. Revenge against the family that rejected him was a powerful motive. Kelley
would not be the first domestic abuser to pick up a gun and begin shooting his
accusers and their family members. This is an all-too-common pattern for mass
shooters.
The morning of the attack Kelley had sent
his mother-in-law a threatening text, one of a series. As events unfolded, it was
apparent that Kelley’s wife and her parents did not arrive at the church until
after the shootings had concluded, which may have surprised the shooter, but
Kelley’s wife’s grandmother did arrive on time for the church service—and was
shot dead by Kelley during his bloodbath.
Some states give courts specific
legislative authority and/or instructions to confiscate all weapons of domestic
abusers who are the subject of restraining orders to stay away from family
members or acquaintances. Such confiscation, which can be renewed by courts for
a number of years, saves lives. It would appear that Texas legislators and
courts are not so inclined.
President Trump’s immediate response to
hearing about the attacks—from a golf course in Japan during his first Far Eastern
presidential trip—was to remark that the attack was “an act of evil.” He added
the next day that "[t]his isn't a guns situation" but, rather, that
"[m]ental health is your problem here," noting that "based on
preliminary reports" the shooter was "a very deranged individual.”
CNN
reported that Trump's characterization was in response to a question during a Tokyo
news conference about whether he believed gun control measures were the answer
to the Texas shooting.
Late
the night of the shooting Trump also ordered that U.S. flags be flown at half-staff
to honor the victims. This is believed to be the first time during the numerous
brutal mass shootings of American citizens both within the U.S. and abroad that
Trump has issued such an order, including after the recent killings of Special
Forces military personnel in Somalia and other foreign theatres of war.
It
is no surprise to Trump watchers that even when the death tally from a mass
shooting is higher than ever before, if the shooter is a white male, the Cause According
to Trump is never: Islamic or homegrown terrorism, nor the ready availability
of guns in the U.S., nor the widespread publicity that accompanies mass
shootings, nor the vitriolic influence of the white supremacy movement fostered
by the Trump administration, nor the general incitement to violence encouraged
by Donald Trump during his disgraceful presidential campaign and its segue into
the worst presidency in U.S. history.
And
speaking of “deranged individuals,” let us not overlook the strenuous efforts
this year by the GOP Congress and Donald Trump to limit or delete mental health
counseling from the country’s national healthcare policies including those offered
by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
[updated November 8]
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