In yet another mass shooting, this time in a Texas church, a lone gunman shot dead 26 people and injured 20 others during the Sunday morning service before fleeing in a car in which he was subsequently found dead following a high speed chase by an armed civilian.
The gunman, armed with a military-style rifle and dressed in an all-black tactical gear with a ballistic vest, was identified as 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley, a former member of US Air Force who was discharged in 2014 for bad conduct, following a court-martial for assaulting his spouse and child.
The motive behind the carnage at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, a small community 30 miles off San Antonio, was not immediately known. The victims of the rampage ranged in age from 5 to 72, and included eight members of one family. There were several children among them, including the pastor’s 14-year-old daughter, police said.
If last month’s massacre at a las Vegas open air concert, killing 58 people and injuring over 400, was the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history, Sunday’s carnage was the biggest mass shooting in the history of Texas.
President Donald Trump, away in Tokyo on the first leg of his five-nation Asia visit, condemned the shooting, calling it an “act of evil”. At a subsequent news conference, he suggested it was a “mental health problem”, remarking: “Based on preliminary reports, a very deranged individual, a lot of problems for a long period of time….This isn’t a guns situation.”
Democrats quickly joined issue with Trump and other Republicans, slamming them for refusing to acknowledge America’s gun crisis and doing nothing to strengthen the country’s lax gun control laws. Grieving with the bereaved families, former President Barack Obama commented in a Twitter post: “May God also grant all of us the wisdom to ask what concrete steps we can take to reduce the violence and weaponry in our midst.”
Police said the gunman first stopped at a gas station across a highway near the church. He drove across the street, got out of his car and began firing from the outside before entering the church premises. “My dad saw the gunman run into the church building and then he heard shots and saw people running. People covered in blood and screaming. It was pandemonium everywhere,” said a person interviewed by CNN.
Media reports said that after the shooting spree, the gunman dropped his weapon, ran to his Ford Explorer and fled — only to be pursued by an armed local resident and another person in a truck in what turned out to be a high speed chase at 95 miles per hour. The shooter “eventually lost control on his own and went off into the ditch”.
Police later found the suspect dead of a gunshot wound inside his vehicle. “At this time, we don’t know if it was a self-inflicted gunshot wound or if he was shot by our local resident who engaged him in a gunfight,” Freeman Martin of the Texas Department of Public Safety said.
“We are dealing with the largest mass shooting in our state’s history,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott told a news conference. “The tragedy of course is worsened by the fact that it occurred in a church, a place of worship where these people were innocently gunned down.”
The worst victim of the tragedy was the Joe and Claryce Holcombe family, which last eight people -- children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The aged couple told The Washington Post that the victims included their son Bryan Holcombe, 60, and his wife, Carla Holcombe, 58, their grandson and his infant daughter, as also their granddaughter-in-law, Crystal, and three of her children.
In a statement from Tokyo, President Trump said: “This horrible act of evil occurred as the victims and their families were in their place of sacred worship. We cannot put into words the pain and grief we all feel, and we cannot begin to imagine the suffering of those who lost the ones they loved. Our hearts are broken. But in dark times such as these, Americans do what we do best: we pull together. We join hands. We lock arms. And through the tears and the sadness, we stand strong.”
As the debate on gun control was brought to the front and centre all over again, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy led the charge, asking his Republican colleagues to consider “whether the political support of the gun industry is worth the blood that flows endlessly onto the floors of American churches, elementary schools, movie theaters, and city streets”.
Kamala Harris, the Indian-American Senator from California, tweeted: “Senseless gun violence has torn apart another community – this time in a house of worship.” An indignant Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts asked in her own Twitter post: “How many more people must die at churches or concerts or schools before we stop letting the @NRA (National Rifle Association) control this country’s gun policiesIJ”