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Authorities Identify Victims and Gunman in Texas Church Shooting Inside a Texas Church, Guns, Bibles and a Spirited Firearms Debate
(about 3 hours later)
WHITE SETTLEMENT, Texas — The gunman who opened fire at a Texas church on Sunday morning, killing two congregants before he was shot and killed by a member of the church’s volunteer security team, was a 43-year-old former drifter with an extensive criminal past, law enforcement authorities said on Monday. WHITE SETTLEMENT, Texas — Midway through a Sunday church service in the suburbs of Fort Worth, an all-too-familiar scene began to unfold: A man in a trench coat rose from the pews, pulled out a shotgun and opened fire, prompting terrified churchgoers to dive for cover.
The authorities identified the gunman as Keith Thomas Kinnunen and said he had used an address about six miles from the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, near Fort Worth, where the shooting took place. But this was Texas, where a pair of state laws adopted since 2017 not only authorize armed security details at houses of worship, but also allow parishioners to bring their own weapons to church.
According to court records, Mr. Kinnunen had a trail of criminal arrests across the country, including assault and disorderly conduct in Arizona and assault and battery in Oklahoma. Within seconds, a volunteer security guard near the back of the West Freeway Church of Christ pulled out his Sig Sauer pistol and fired back. One after another, at least half a dozen other parishioners drew their own weapons and began moving up the aisles.
On Sunday, as a hushed congregation sat listening to the service with rapt attention, several leaning forward and with folded hands, Mr. Kinnunen stood up and fired a shotgun into the crowd. A woman in one of the middle pews, holding a handgun aloft, calmly guided terrified churchgoers to safety as the pastor crawled down from the pulpit on all fours.
Jack Wilson, the head of security at the church, shot and killed Mr. Kinnunen seconds later. Mr. Wilson later posted a message on Facebook saying that he had been put in a position he hoped no one would have to be in, “but evil exists and I had to take out an active shooter in church.” “How many more would be lost if we hadn’t had a good guy with a gun?” Texas State Representative Jonathan Stickland said in a statement calling for even fewer restrictions on carrying firearms. “We need more of them.”
“Evil does exist in this world,” he added, “and I and other members are not going to allow evil to succeed.” President Trump weighed in late Monday with a similar message on Twitter: “Lives were saved by these heroes, and Texas laws allowing them to carry arms!”
Mr. Kinnunen had sat with the parishioners before opening fire, striking Anton Wallace, 64, and Richard White, 67, both of the Fort Worth area. Both died at a nearby hospital, according to the state’s public safety department. In the nation’s long debate over mass shootings, gun rights advocates have long argued that a well-armed public is a more effective immediate response than trying to place new limits on buying and using firearms.
Mr. Kinnunen had been arrested a number of times in the Fort Worth area for charges that included aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Then in 2016, he was arrested in Linden, N.J., after police found him with a 12-gauge shotgun and rounds in the area of a Phillips 66 refinery, according to a news report in mycentraljersey.com at the time. The report said that he was traveling on a bicycle, asking about photographing the oil tank field at the refinery. The shooting on Sunday has been seized on by some lawmakers in Texas as an example of how more gun-friendly laws can help save lives. Mr. Stickland, a Republican from the Fort Worth suburbs, renewed his call for a “constitutional carry” law that would allow any legal gun owner to carry a weapon anywhere without a permit.
Mr. Kinnunen told the Linden police that he was traveling from Texas but homeless and that he took photos of interesting sites, the report said. - “We can’t prevent mental illness from occurring, and we can’t prevent every crazy person from pulling a gun,” Ken Paxton, Texas’ attorney general, said outside the church in White Settlement. “But we can be prepared like this church was.”
Other offenses Mr. Kinnunen was charged with include speeding, theft, assault and disorderly conduct in Pima County, Ariz., between 2003 and 2014, petit larceny in Las Vegas in 2011, theft in San Luis Obispo County, Calif., in 2010, and felony charges of aggravated assault and battery in Grady County, Okla. But that notion has been ridiculed by gun control advocates, who argue that taking high-powered weaponry out of the hands of dangerous individuals can save even more lives.
Mr. Kinnunen was confronted twice in 2011 by the police in Tuttle, Okla. In one case, a convenience store worker told officers that Mr. Kinnunen wrestled him to the ground and hit him repeatedly, causing a possible broken rib. According to a police report, Mr. Kinnunen was upset about being confronted for riding his motorcycle through the grass outside the store and damaging a sign. “It’s not rocket science,” said State Representative Mary Gonzalez, a Democrat from El Paso. “There are so many things that could be done that we just haven’t been doing in the state. We are not trying to take away guns. We’re just trying to make sure guns are not in the hands of the wrong people.”
In the other incident, a son of Mr. Kinnunen accused him of setting three small fires. In one case, the son said, Mr. Kinnunen siphoned gas from his motorcycle and used it to burn branches in the street. In another, officers wrote in their report that Mr. Kinnunen “soaked a football in lamp oil, then lit it on fire and played ‘fire football.’” The son told officers that he was afraid of Mr. Kinnunen. The gunman in Sunday’s shooting was brought down by a single shot fired by a member of the church’s volunteer security team, the authorities said. The security volunteer, Jack Wilson, is a firearms instructor and gun range owner who has been a reserve deputy with a local sheriff’s department.
On Monday, the glass doors to the church in White Settlement were locked as church leaders and congregation members huddled together, preparing to issue a public statement. A video of the attack, captured on a livestream of Sunday’s church service, showed that Mr. Wilson took only six seconds to kill the gunman, identified by the authorities as Keith Thomas Kinnunen, a drifter who had a string of arrests in various states for assault and other crimes. His most recent address was about six miles from the church.
As he left the church to climb into his car, the church’s education minister, Jack Cummings, said his wife died recently after a long struggle with ovarian cancer, and after Sunday’s attack, he felt “numb.” “The events at West Freeway Church of Christ put me in a position that I would hope no one would have to be in,” Mr. Wilson said in a Facebook post early Monday, adding, “But evil does exist in this world and I and other members are not going to allow evil to succeed.”
“I just lost my wife and now this,” he said. West Freeway Church of Christ’s volunteer security team is one of a number of measures adopted by churches, synagogues and mosques across the country as the number of mass shootings targeting worshipers continues to increase.
About 250 people were inside the auditorium of the church on Sunday when the gunman began shooting just before communion. “When I first started, a lot of churches were reluctant to even talk about that,” said Steven Padin, a retired Buffalo police officer and the chief consultant for the Watchman’s Academy, which focuses on church safety. “It’s a sad situation that more and more churches are becoming aware of it because of the way society is going.”
Mr. Cummings said the gunman had drawn the attention of the church’s security team before the shooting. A member of the security team said that the shooter was wearing a fake beard, which is what tipped off security, according to a CBS News producer. At Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, an African-American congregation outside Atlanta that had been the intended target of a recently foiled plot, members spent the Saturday after Thanksgiving in an active-shooter training session led by the local police.
Church officials said the security team, made up of congregation members licensed to carry firearms, saved lives. “What security measures can you do every time you meet as a people to protect yourselves from a threat coming?” Jay Parrish, the chief of police in Gainesville, Ga., asked the group to contemplate. “We have to have that mind-set unfortunately.”
The debate about guns in church has played out at statehouses across the country. Texas, which has some of the nation’s least restrictive gun laws, has been buffeted in recent years with a string of mass shootings. An attack in August at a Walmart in El Paso left 20 people dead, and 10 students were killed at a high school in the city of Santa Fe last year. A shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs in 2017 killed 26 people and helped intensify a push by Republican lawmakers to loosen restrictions on guns in churches.
In Missouri, State Representative Jered Taylor has introduced bills in recent years that would remove churches from the state’s list of gun-free zones, meaning people would be allowed to carry a weapon in church unless a sign was posted banning guns. Just this year, laws were passed to allow the carrying of guns after natural disasters and to prevent landlords from disallowing gun ownership for their tenants. Another law on church security, going further than the 2017 law, took effect in September. It allows congregants to bring legally owned guns to church even if the church had not specifically invited such measures.
“Let’s give people the ability to protect their family members, their friends,” said Mr. Taylor, a Republican, “rather than leaving them defenseless or sitting ducks while they’re worshiping.” Similar legislation has been debated across the country, including in Missouri, where a proposal to remove churches from the state’s list of gun-free zones has faced opposition from religious groups, including Roman Catholic leaders. Archbishop Robert Carlson of St. Louis said last year that the bill then under consideration would “broaden Second Amendment rights at the expense of the First Amendment right of religious liberty,” according to an article by Religion News Service.
The idea has been opposed by some religious groups in Missouri, including Roman Catholic leaders. Archbishop Robert Carlson of St. Louis said last year that the bill then under consideration would “broaden Second Amendment rights at the expense of the First Amendment right of religious liberty,” according to an article by Religion News Service. The push for the legislation in Texas gained traction after the shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs. Frank Pomeroy, the church’s pastor, whose 14-year-old daughter was killed, said the congregants’ response in White Settlement showed the role that well-trained armed security can play in saving lives.
But Mr. Taylor, who plans to push the measure again in 2020, called the response by parishioners in Texas an example of how lives could be saved by having legally armed churchgoers. “That’s why the shooting yesterday was stopped in just a few seconds,” Mr. Pomeroy, now a Republican candidate for the State Senate, said. “Praise God!”
“Had he been able to continue firing and no one been able to stop him, who knows how many people would have been killed?” Mr. Taylor said. As officials lavished praise on the armed volunteers’ efforts, some Texans argued that it is important not just to allow weapons into churches, but also to train people to use them.
The shooting, which the authorities said lasted six seconds, was captured on video because the church regularly posts its services online. “Just being there with a gun is not enough,” said Chuck Chadwick, the leader of the National Organization of Church Security and Safety, who runs a Texas-based security service for churches. “You’ve got to be trained enough to be able to carry out what you need to do in the time you have to do it.”
In the video, the gunman stands up during a quiet moment and briefly talks with someone standing against a wall. He then begins firing. Congregants crouch down in their pews. After a third loud bang, the gunman slumps to the ground as people scream. On Monday, more than a dozen cars were parked outside the khaki-colored brick church in White Settlement, a community of roughly 18,000 people. “We’re doing O.K.,” Britt Farmer, the senior minister who had leapt to the floor after the gunfire rang out, said at the front entrance to a church office.
“He was immediately hit by one of our marksmen,” Mr. Cummings said. “The next thing I know, he was lying on the floor.” Jack Cummings, another minister at the church, said that he was simply “numb,” having already been shaken by the recent death of his wife from ovarian cancer. “I just lost my wife, and now this,” he said.
Dave Montgomery reported from White Settlement, Texas. Anemona Hartecollis reported from New York, and Mitch Smith reported from Chicago. Mihir Zaveri contributed reporting from New York, and Alain Delaqueriere contributed research. Mr. Kinnunen, 43, had been arrested a number of times in the Fort Worth area for charges that included aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Then in 2016, he was arrested in Linden, N.J., after police found him with a 12-gauge shotgun and rounds in the area of a Phillips 66 refinery, according to a news report in mycentraljersey.com at the time.
Mr. Kinnunen told the Linden police that he was traveling from Texas but was homeless, and was taking photos of interesting sites, the report said. At the time, he was wanted on a court warrant in Oklahoma for felony aggravated assault.
Mr. Kinnunen faced charges of speeding, theft, assault and disorderly conduct in Pima County, Ariz., between 2003 and 2014, petit larceny in Las Vegas in 2011, theft in San Luis Obispo County, Calif., in 2010, and aggravated assault and battery in 2011 and arson in 2012 in Grady County, Okla.
As brief as it was, the attack resulted in two fatalities: Anton Wallace, 64, and Richard White, 67, both of the Fort Worth area.
Mr. Wallace’s daughter, Tiffany Wallace, told KXAS-TV, a Dallas station, that her father was a deacon at the church and had just handed out communion when the gunman approached him.
“I ran toward my dad, and the last thing I remember is him asking for oxygen,” Ms. Wallace told the station. “And I was just holding him, telling him I loved him and that he was going to make it.”
Misty York White, Mr. White’s daughter-in-law, called him a hero. “You stood up against evil and sacrificed your life,” she wrote on Facebook. “You have always been a hero to us but the whole world is seeing you as a hero now.”
Investigators said on Monday that the motive for the attack remained under investigation. But Mr. Kinnunen’s sister, Amy Dawn, in a post on Facebook, said the shooting had occurred on the birthday of their younger brother, Joel, who had killed himself 10 years earlier.
“My brother Keith committed double murder yesterday,” she wrote, in a raw stream of words. She said that she and her siblings had a tough childhood, raised by an absent mother who watched television and slept all day and a father who did not speak to them.
“He was close to the Lord, why I feel he chose a church,” she wrote of the attack.
“My heart is broken for my loves,” she said. “The demons won.”
Dave Montgomery reported from White Settlement, Texas, Rick Rojas from Atlanta, Anemona Hartecollis from New York, and Mitch Smith from Chicago. Mihir Zaveri contributed reporting from New York, and Audra D.S. Burch from Gainesville, Ga. Alain Delaqueriere contributed research.