What was Devin Patrick Kelley’s motive? That’s what investigators have yet to determine after Kelley opened fire Sunday in a rural Baptist church in Texas, killing 26 people and injuring 20 others.
Kelley committed suicide by shooting himself after a police chase. Law enforcement officials said he called his father during the pursuit.
Investigators said Sunday’s massacre in Sutherland Springs, Texas, didn’t appear to be a random act. Kelley’s mother-in-law and father-in-law attended the church, but weren’t present Sunday, police said. The AP reported Monday that Kelley’s mother-in-law received threatening texts from him before the attack, and CNN reported that Kelley’s wife’s grandmother, Lula White, was among those killed.
It’s the latest in a string of U.S. mass shootings, coming just weeks after a gunman killed 58 people in Las Vegas in the deadliest shooting by a single gunman in the nation’s history.
Who Was Devin Patrick Kelley?
Kelley, 26, was a U.S. Air Force Veteran who was dishonorably discharged for assaulting his wife and child, according to Air Force officials. Kelley served in its Logistics Readiness unit at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico from 2010 until his discharge in 2014.
He was court-martialed in 2012 for the assaults and served confinement for a year. Kelley reportedly divorced that wife, then later remarried.
Kelley had mental health problems and was denied a Texas gun permit, Texas Gov. Greg Abbot told CBS.
Photos online showed Kelley with two children, and a now-deleted Facebook post shows a picture of an AR-15 semiautomatic weapon with the caption: “She’s a bad b–ch.” Kelley was armed with an assault rifle and a handgun during the attack and was dressed in all black and tactical gear.
A ‘sick,’ ‘deranged’ person
Two of Kelley’s former girlfriends told media he stalked them after their breakups. “He was very sick in the head,” Katy Landry, a former girlfriend of Devin Patrick Kelley, told NBC News. Landry said Kelley used to tell her “sick strange things,” and assaulted her. He would prank call her, and bribe her to hang out, she told the news outlet. Another former girlfriend, Brittany Adcock, said she was 13 when she started to date Kelley, who was 18 at the time.
“At the time I didn’t think much into it being so young but now I realize that there’s something off about someone who is 18 with someone who is 13,” she told NBC News. After their breakup, Kelley harassed Adcock by continually calling her. He later asked her to move in with him and his then wife, saying he’d take care of her as long as she walked around topless, Adcock said.
President Donald Trump told reporters Kelley was “deranged” and pointed to “a mental health problem at the highest level.”
Criminal records show Kelley had only minor driving violations. There has been no link between Kelley and terrorist or militia groups, authorities said, though investigators are still looking into his background.
Kelley lived in New Braunfels, a town about 35 miles north of Sutherland Springs.
