Devin Kelly was sent to a mental Health Clinic 5 years ago, after being called "a danger to himself and others." The reason he was sent to the health clinic was that he assaulted his ex-wife and his stepson. He was additionally sending death threats to his "military chain of command, according to a police report. Because of this, police officials said he could have been legally banned from owning rifles.
In June of 2012, the police of El Paso arrested Kelly at a bus station, according to police reports. About 100 miles away, officers reported that he had run from the mental health clinic in New Mexico.
Late in the year of 2012, Devin Kelly was discovered guilty of assaulting both his stepson and the mother. For this offense, he was sentenced to one year in US Navy prison.
He was at the same church where the shooting occurred five days earlier
Kelly attended the church's annual fall festival five days earlier with his children, according to a Houston Chronicle newspaper article. A close friend of Kelly's mother-in-law said she was happy to see Kelly at the fall festival. Children were shown playing games while dressed up as zombies and skeletons on the church's Facebook page, along with some of the victims.
The shooting happened 5 days later, using 450 rounds of ammunition, and shooting in from the outside of the wooden church.
A survivor who was sitting at the front of the isles in the church said that Kelly shouted: "Everybody die!" at the soon-to-be dead victims. Ms. Soils tried to help by getting everybody down, to hide under isles and chairs, to hopefully cover them from the bullets.
Survivors said that Kelly strolled up and down the isles multiple times, looking for any church-goers he had missed.
Children were also shot as they were crying, and at very close proximity, survivors told the BBC. Some survivors survived the terror attack by staying quiet and playing dead under objects. One survivor was shot in the arm, but the survivor stayed silent and was not noticed by the gunman.
Another survivor got very lucky, Farida Brown, 73.
As the shooter was loading his rounds, he stared at Brown multiple times. Another church-goer whispered to her "you're going to heaven, you're going to heaven," and at this point, she knew that she would die next. However, a hero, a citizen who lived next to the church, rushed in with a gun, mowing down Kelly, his name is Stephen Willeford. Kelly ran away and raced away in his car, while one of the survivors tried to catch him in a truck.
Kelly was found in a ditch, with a bullet in his head, and the wound is believed to be self-inflicted.
