So, who was the shooter at the Osteen church in Houston? [scroll down for UPDATE]
A woman who walked into a popular Texas megachurch Sunday afternoon with a long gun and a young child opened fire before she was killed by law enforcement officers on scene. The gunfire left the child in critical condition and another man injured, officials said.
Authorities are now probing the shooting at televangelist and pastor Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church – roughly 6 miles from downtown Houston.
The woman, identified in a search warrant as Genesse Ivonne Moreno, 36, entered the church shortly before 2 p.m. wearing a trench coat and backpack and opened fire, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said in a Sunday afternoon news conference.
Officers “shot and killed her in self-defense” after she pointed her weapon at them, according to the search warrant released Monday by the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office.
Female shooters are unusual, but not unheard of. Some recent ones have actually been trans, and although a few outlets have said that Moreno was trans, there is no official confirmation so we still don’t know for sure. However, a previously unheard of thing – as far as I can tell – is for any such shooter in the US to purposely bring a young child to the scene of the planned murder or murders.
Why would anyone do that? The following – which can be found quite far down in the story, might just be a hint:
The shooter used an AR-15 that had “Free Palestine” written on it, according to a federal law enforcement source. Investigators are trying to determine whether she was politically motivated or a disturbed individual, the source said.
Well, how about “both”? It’s an old Palestinian custom to use children either as human shields to discourage authorities from shooting, or as tools to implicate authorities for cruelty if the child is hit by their return fire.
And you better believe that, if the weapon was reported to have had something like “Donald Trump is the greatest!” on it, that would have been the CNN lede and headline.
The right-leaning NY Post covers the story quite differently. The transgender possibility is in the headline, and the “Free Palestine” detail is in the lede sentence.
More on the possible transgender angle:
Moreno had a criminal history dating back to 2005 and was previously arrested under the name Jeffery Escalante, according to local station KHOU, raising questions over whether the shooter was transitioning before or at the time of the attack.
A 2022 photo taken when Moreno was booked into jail at Fort Bend County, Texas, listed her sex as female, according to the website Mugshots Zone.
I haven’t seen any article mentioning the obvious, which is that Moreno/Escalante seems to be Hispanic. The shooting occurred right before a Spanish-language service, as well.
At any rate, this sort of incident is why many houses of worship have armed guards these days. It’s a wise move.
UPDATE 6:40 PM:
Now it is reported that the shooter was a biological woman with “a history of mental illness,” and that the child was her 7-year-old son.
Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said it remained too soon to identify a motive for the shooting, but officials said they were looking into a dispute involving the shooter and the family of the shooter’s ex-husband, adding that investigators also found antisemitic writings by the shooter.
Hassig also said the rifle used in the shooting had a “Palestine” sticker on the buttstock.
This sounds as though the incident may have involved a combination of factors: a mentally disturbed person, a family conflict, and recent current events giving the perp’s rage a pro-Palestinian political form and perhaps even the idea of taking her child with her as a combination of shield and sacrifice. The child was shot in the head, whether by the woman or the security guards we don’t know, but the exchange of gunfire occurred in a hallway and lasted several minutes.
Fox News now says Moreno was born with the surname Escalante and was from El Salvador. Also, the unfortunate child is not expected to live, and so we may soon get some idea of who the child was.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/lakewood-church-shooting-suspect-identified-transgender-woman-long-criminal-record
We don’t have armed guards at our small church, but we do have a security system emergency alert button, and at least one parishioner carries a concealed gun regularly (with permit).
If you are a high enough profile target and you don’t have armed security and rapid response capacity you are an idiot.
Especially in a heightened anti-Christian era.
Generally I take it as a given that a lone wolf type who shoots up a public place is at minimum “a disturbed individual”. Sure, I suppose you could argue that generic gang bangers, cartel hitmen, or other organized crime thugs aren’t necessarily “disturbed” in the sense that they’re not mentally ill (unless you consider psycopathy to be a mental illness anyway) who shoot up a public place. Or I guess a theoretically sane person could have purely political motives, making such an act terrorism. But when you’ve got a perpetrator purposefully gunning down unarmed and unready people, and especially children, it seems pretty hard to claim that they’re not at least “disturbed” even if they may have some coherent motives.
Kate, in reporting on the day of, I think it was said that she was confronted by two off-duty police officers who eventually shot her. Both were in the congregation.
But when you’ve got a perpetrator purposefully gunning down unarmed and unready people, and especially children, it seems pretty hard to claim that they’re not at least “disturbed” even if they may have some coherent motives.
–Nonapod
As I understand it, even the Nazis didn’t require fellow Germans to sign up for the Einsatzgruppen (death squads) or for concentration camp personnel.
Those killers were volunteers.
(Should have followed the link before I opened my mouth!)
yes we’re in good hands sarchttps://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1757140525059031552
I heard it was her son.
And it seems she was trans, pretending to be a man.
Was she illegal?
Now Fox News says the shooter was actually female, and the probably-soon-dead child was her 7-year-old biological son. She had used a male name on occasion in the past, and had a criminal record. Investigators are now looking into how she managed to buy the gun.
There was a lot of internet chatter in Texas after the Sutherland Springs massacre, and the White Settlement church shooting a few years ago – about security in churches, and how many of them either had volunteer armed security teams or paid security on hand – especially the large congregations in cities. People became very, very aware of how vulnerable a congregation might be, at a worship service – especially in an urban situation – and began taking quiet precautions. Things like organizing response teams, encouraging concealed carry, keeping a close eye on random people who might be disruptive or dangerous – even locking the doors when services began.
Osteen’s mega church is actually the former home to the Houston Rockets, called The Summit – that’s how big it is. I’ve variously seen stories that the shooter was born male but presents female, and vice-versa so….. I guess eventually the media will find out.
Nowhere did I see ‘trans-sexual’ mentioned in the first 5 paragraphs, which is the larger problem: Fake News. It seems pretty obvious when you see the first picture that this is not a female, but appearances are deceiving aren’t they.
The dad of a good friend of ours was there, welcoming congregants at one of the entrances – not the one the shooter used. When the shooting started, he began helping people to escape. Fortunately his wife stayed home sick yesterday.
He said he saw 2 shooters, the woman and a man, but concedes that the man may have been one of the off-duty (but carrying, and thank God for it) cops in the congregation.
He is a singularly unshakeable person. Once he was allowed to leave the scene, he first called his wife of course, then went to his daughter’s (our friends’) house, then came to our place with his daughter and son-in-law to watch the game. He said his wife Luisa, during the ordeal, got a call from a friend who was hunkered down somewhere in the facility (it wasn’t at Osteen’s main church, to which Aggie referred, but at one of the others – still big, but not as big as that one); the friend, scared to death, asked Luisa what she should do. Luisa, with no other help to offer, prayed with her on the phone until she was safe.
A TV news video said that police were searching her Conroe home. Conroe is 45 miles away from that church. Why does one drive 45 miles to do shoot up a church congregation?
Yet another reason why those to the right of Manchin/Sinema laugh at mass layoffs at media companies. Larry Corriea put it bluntly: We hate you because you lie to us.
Both my father and brother still make their living putting ink on newsprint. What matters to them is getting the name of the female point guard right, she of the team that played a school 10 times bigger, and nearly won.
And what the hell, Krysten Sinema? It’s obvious to one and all you don’t like the left wing of your (former) party. And you’ve stated that the Republicans wouldn’t take you (presumably because you’re bisexual). That isn’t true.
I don’t know the people in my district intimately. But it’s as conservative as it gets in the valley, and they’d welcome you with all your peculiarities, if you’d just behave as if Arizona comes first.
Like clockwork.
If a German volunteered for the concentration camp slots or the Einsatzgruppen, he wouldn’t have to go to the Eastern Front.
It’s hard for the Bee to keep up these days with reality continually telling them “Okay, top this!”
Houston PD Says We May Never Know Motive Of Church Shooter Who Wrote ‘Free Palestine’ On Gun