Mourning Humanity

"[Sutherland Springs is the kind of place where] everybody knows everybody."

"This is a small, Christian town, a very small community. Everybody's united. Everybody's so close to everybody."

"I can feel the pain everybody's going through. There's so much hurt for a small town."

Gloria Rodriguez Ximenez, Sutherland Springs resident, vigil for First Baptist Church victims

"[The resident] briefed me quickly on what had just happened and said we had to get him, and so that's what I did [gave chase as the shooter drove off and called police]."

"[The shooter] eventually lost control on his own and went off into the ditch [in Guadalupe County]."

"The gentleman that was with me got out and rested his rifle on my hood and kept it aimed at him [shooter], telling him to get out. There was no movement, there was none of that. I just know his brake lights were going on and off, so he might've been unconscious from the crash or something like that. I'm not sure."

Johnnie Langendorff, truck driver, casually passing through Sutherland Springs

First Baptist Church; investigators work at the scene of the mass shooting. CNN

Who in the world doesn't know that a deranged psychopath marched into a church in a small town in Texas and in a seven-minute shooting spree shot 26 people dead, wounding another 20. Virtually all the souls that happened to be in that church of close-knit families and neighbours on Sunday morning. He was evidently hoping that the mother of his second wife, a regular church-goer, would be present. She was not there that morning, but her mother, the psychotic shooter's wife's grandmother was, and she is among the 26 dead.

This man never hesitated as he aimed his rifle at the rows of worshippers, deliberately and with intended lethal malice. In the process he killed ten women, seven men, eight children and an unborn fetus who died along with its mother. Of the children the youngest was one year old, while the oldest of the parishioners killed in this abhorrent slaughter was 77. And then the killer fled. But not before a neighbour attempted to confront him with his own firearm, shooting him twice, but not preventing him from reaching his vehicle and driving off.

That neighbour, Stephen Willeford, stopped another man just driving through in a truck, quickly apprised him of what had occurred and then both men sped off after the fleeing killer, witness to his vehicle swerving off eventually into a ditch. Where it appeared Devin Kelley shot himself dead. He had meant to escape, to save himself and salvage an unsalvageable life. At age 26 he had experienced much, and none of it creditable as a human being. Dishonourably discharged from the U.S. Air force for conduct unbecoming any decent person.

He had beaten his first wife and her son, been accused of cruelty to animals, threatened his commanding officers, escaped from a mental institution where he was placed while awaiting court martial. And shockingly, the air force authorities who should have routinely informed civil authorities of this man's record in criminality failed to do so, enabling him to pass security checks for employment and most alarming of all, to legally obtain firearms.

The year he served incarcerated for criminal offences alone should have disqualified him from purchasing weapons. But he was armed with an assault rifle when he entered the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs with magazines capable of holding over 400 rounds of ammunition. Little wonder his assault within the little church victimizing peaceful congregants at prayer was so devastatingly lethal.

None of the databases operated by the FBI reflected caution respecting this man and his criminal record. It appears that criminal cases registered with the military are not routinely as they are expected to be, reported to the FBI. He was himself an irregular attendee at the church he had targeted. One the pastor would much have preferred he not attend, considering him to be a potential threat, a man of obvious bad character.

Little would he have known of the horror awaiting his church and his congregants whom he considered to be 'family', much less that he and his wife would lose their 14-year-old daughter to the malevolent hatred of this psychopathic killer.