WHITE SETTLEMENT,
Texas (AP) — Alarms went off in Jack Wilson’s head the moment a man
wearing a fake beard, a wig, a hat and a long coat walked into a Texas
church for Sunday services.
By
the time the man approached a communion server and pulled out a
shotgun, Wilson and another security volunteer were already reaching for
their own guns.
The
attacker shot the other volunteer, Richard White, and then the server,
Anton “Tony” Wallace, sending congregants scrambling for cover. The
gunman was heading toward the front of the sanctuary as Wilson searched
for a clear line of fire.
“I
didn’t have a clear window,” he said, referring to church members who
“were jumping, going chaotic.” Wilson, a 71-year-old firearms instructor
who has also been a reserve sheriff’s deputy, said: “They were standing
up. I had to wait about half a second, or a second, to get my shot. I
fired one round. The subject went down.”
Wilson’s
single shot quickly ended the attack that killed Wallace, 64, and
White, 67, at the West Freeway Church of Christ in the Fort Worth-area
town of White Settlement. He said the entire confrontation was over in
no more than six seconds. More than 240 congregants were in the church
at the time.
“The
only clear shot I had was his head because I still had people in the
pews that were not all the way down as low as they could. That was my
one shot,” Wilson said Monday from his home in nearby Granbury.
As
Wilson approached the fallen attacker, he noticed five or six other
members of the volunteer security team he had trained with their guns
drawn. Wilson said they had their eyes on the man since he arrived.
During the service, White and Wilson had stationed themselves at the
back of the church, watching him.
The
Texas Department of Public Safety on Monday identified the attacker as
Keith Thomas Kinnunen, 43. His motive is under investigation.
Speaking
outside the church Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said
authorities “can’t prevent mental illness from occurring, and we can’t
prevent every crazy person from pulling a gun. But we can be prepared
like this church was.”
Britt Farmer, senior minister of the church, said Sunday, “We lost two great men today, but it could have been a lot worse.”
Wilson
described the attacker’s gun as a short-barreled 12-gauge shotgun with a
pistol grip. Shotguns with barrels less than 18 inches long are
restricted under federal law and can be legally owned in Texas only if
they are registered with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives.
After the shooting, Texas officials hailed the state’s gun laws, including a measure enacted this year that affirmed the right of licensed handgun holders to carry a weapon in places of worship, unless the facility bans them.
That
law was passed in the aftermath of the deadliest mass shooting in Texas
history, which was also at a church. In the 2017 massacre at First
Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, a man who opened fire on a Sunday morning congregation killed more than two dozen people. He later killed himself.
President Donald Trump also tweeted
his appreciation for state’s gun legislation Monday night, saying,
“Lives were saved by these heroes, and Texas laws allowing them to carry
arms!”
Isabel Arreola told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
that she sat near the gunman in White Settlement and that she had never
seen him before. She said he was wearing what appeared to be a disguise
and made her uncomfortable.
“I was so surprised because I did not know that so many in the church were armed,” she said.
Sunday’s shooting was the second attack on a religious gathering in the U.S. in less than 24 hours. On Saturday night, a man stabbed five people as they celebrated Hanukkah in an Orthodox Jewish community north of New York City.
Wallace’s daughter, Tiffany Wallace, told Dallas TV station KXAS that her father was a deacon at the church.
“I
ran toward my dad, and the last thing I remember is him asking for
oxygen. And I was just holding him, telling him I loved him and that he
was going to make it,” Wallace said.
“You just wonder why? How can someone so evil, the devil, step into the church and do this,” she said.
White’s
daughter-in-law, Misty York White, called him a hero on Facebook: “You
stood up against evil and sacrificed your life. Many lives were saved
because of your actions. You have always been a hero to us but the whole
world is seeing you as a hero now. We love you, we miss you, we are
heartbroken.”
Matthew
DeSarno, the agent in charge of the FBI’s Dallas office, said the
assailant was “relatively transient” but had roots in the area.
Paxton
said Monday that the shooter appeared to be “more of a loner.” “I don’t
think he had a lot of connections to very many people,” he said.
Investigators
searched Kinnunen’s home in nearby River Oaks, a small city where
police said his department’s only contact with the gunman was a couple
of traffic citations. But Kinnunen appeared to have more serious brushes
in other jurisdictions. He was arrested in 2009 on charges of
aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in Fort Worth and in 2013 for
theft, according to Tarrant County court records.
He
was arrested in 2016 in New Jersey after police found him with 12-gauge
shotgun and rounds wrapped in plastic in the area of an oil refinery,
according to the Herald News Tribune in East Brunswick. It was not immediately clear how those charges were resolved.
In
a 2009 affidavit requesting a court-appointed attorney, Kinnunen listed
having a wife and said he was living with four children, according to
court records. He told the court he was self-employed in landscaping and
irrigation work.
Kinnunen’s extensive criminal record also included assault charges in Oklahoma and Arizona.
Court records from Grady County, Oklahoma, obtained by Dallas television station KXAS,
show that Kinnunen’s ex-wife sought a protective order in 2012 in which
Cindy Glasgow-Voegel described her husband as a “violent, paranoid
person with a long line of assault and batteries with and without
firearms. He is a religious fanatic, says he’s battling a demon.”
Church
officials held a closed meeting and prayer vigil just for church
members Monday evening. Farmer told the crowd that he had encountered
Kinnunen in the past.
“I had seen him. I had visited with him. I had given him food,” Farmer said.
White
Settlement’s website says it was named by local Native Americans in the
1800s for white families then settling in the area. City leaders who
worried that the name detracted from the city’s image proposed renaming
it in 2005, but voters overwhelmingly rejected the idea.
Wilson
said the church started the security team about 18 months ago after
moving to a new building and becoming concerned about crime in the area.
Wilson has been a firearms instructor since 1995, spent six years in
the Army National Guard and was a Hood County reserve deputy. He said
some of the security team members he trained were at first afraid to
touch a gun.
“I don’t feel like I killed a human, I killed an evil,” Wilson said. “That’s how I’m coping with the situation.”
___
Associated
Press writers Paul J. Weber in Austin, Jamie Stengle in Dallas, Jill
Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas, and news researcher Rhonda Shafner in
New York contributed to this report.
