Texas Church Shooting
November 14, 2017
This past Sunday on November the 5th, a deadly shooting took place at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs. A reported number of 26 were pronounced dead, and at least half of them were children. Many were in critical condition as the stirred question “Why?” was brought up. “We know that he expressed anger towards his mother-in-law, who attends this church,” said Freeman Martin, of the Texas Department of Public Safety, in a press conference on Monday. About 20 people were estimated to have sustained injuries some of them in critical condition.
The suspect has been identified as 26 year old, Devin Patrick Kelly, a U.S. Air Force Veteran who was arrested for charges of domestic abuse towards his stepson and wife, however those reports were not filed and he was discharged from the Air Force on accounts of “Bad Conduct”.
It was reported that Kelly was wearing a bulletproof vest both on his front and back, leaving only his sides exposed. Kelly was reported to have been shot before he fled the scene. Kelly was later found dead in his car from a gunshot wound after texting his father that he didn’t think he was going to make it.
Among on of the children shot and killed was 14 year old Annabelle Pomeroy, the daughter of the pastor within the church. Both the pastor and the mother were not present in the church when the shooting took place. Her mother said, “Our church was not comprised of members or parishioners. We were a very close family. We ate together, we laughed together, we cried together, and we worshiped together,” she said. “Now most of our church family is gone, our building is probably beyond repair. … As senseless as this tragedy was, our sweet Belle would not have been able to deal with losing so much family yesterday.”
One of the reasons why the massacre stopped was due to Stephen Willeford. He was about a block away when his daughter reported hearing gun fire, at that point he grabbed his gun and tried to fend off the shooter, successfully wounding and causing him to flee the scene.
The video below is an interview with the man deemed a hero, Stephen Willeford, and what he did that stopped the attack:
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