A woman in a trenchcoat opened fire with a long gun on Sunday inside celebrity pastor Joel Osteen’s megachurch in Texas, sending worshipers rushing to find safety while two off-duty officers confronted and killed the shooter.
Two other people were shot and injured, including a five-year-old boy who was in critical condition.
The violence erupted shortly before the Houston church’s 2pm Spanish service was set to begin, just as the rest of the country was preparing for the Super Bowl.
Photo: AP
The woman entered the enormous Lakewood Church — a building with a 16,000-person capacity that was previously an arena for the NBA’s Houston Rockets — with the boy who was later hurt in the shootout with police. A man in his 50s was also wounded.
Details of the confrontation remain unclear in the hours after the tragedy, and police have not released the woman’s identity or a possible motive. It is also unknown what relationship, if any, the woman had to the boy, and who actually shot him and the man.
“I will say this,” Houston Police Chief Troy Finner told reporters during a news conference outside the church. “That female, that suspect, put that baby in danger. I’m going to put that blame on her.”
The boy was in critical condition at a children’s hospital, while the man was stable at a different hospital with a hip wound.
The shooting happened between services at the megachurch that is regularly attended by 45,000 people every week, making it the third-largest megachurch in the US, according to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.
Osteen said the violence could have been much worse if it had happened during the earlier, larger 11am service.
Witnesses told reporters that they heard multiple gunshots.
Christina Rodriguez, who was inside the church, told Houston television station KTRK that she “started screaming: ‘There’s a shooter, there’s a shooter,’” and then she and others ran to the backside of a library inside the building, and stood in a stairway before they were told it was safe to leave.
Longtime church member Alan Guity, whose family is from Honduras, said he was resting inside the church’s sanctuary before the Spanish service as his mother was working as an usher when he heard gunshots.
“Boom, boom, boom, boom and I yelled: ‘Mom,’” he said.
The 35-year-old ran to his mother and they both lay flat on the floor and prayed as the gunfire continued. They remained there for about five minutes until someone told them it was safe to evacuate.
Outside, Guity said, he and his mother tried to calm people down by worshiping and singing in Spanish: “Move in me, move in me. Touch my mind and my heart. Move within me Holy Spirit.”
Despite the chaos, Finner said the tragedy “could have been a lot worse” if the two officers had not “engaged” the woman when she opened fire. They had been working security at the church on Sunday, and Finner praised them for their quick actions.
The officers work for the Houston Police Department and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission. Both have been placed on protocol-mandated administrative duty.
The woman had told police that she had a bomb, but authorities said no explosives were found when her vehicle and backpack were searched.
First responders continued to search the megachurch for hours afterwards.
His congregation is “devastated,” Osteen said, adding that he would pray for the victims and for the woman who did the shooting and their families.
It was not clear where he was at the time of the shooting.
“We’re going to stay strong and we’re going to continue to, to move forward,” he said during the news conference with police. “There are forces of evil, but the forces that are for us — the forces of God — are stronger than that. So we’re going to keep going strong and just, you know, doing what God’s called us to do: lift people up and give hope to the world.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a statement saying “our hearts are with those impacted by today’s tragic shooting and the entire Lakewood Church community in Houston. Places of worship are sacred.”
The death of a former head of China’s one-child policy has been met not by tributes, but by castigation of the abandoned policy on social media this week. State media praised Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), former head of China’s National Family Planning Commission from 1988 to 1998, as “an outstanding leader” in her work related to women and children. The reaction on Chinese social media to Peng’s death in Beijing on Sunday, just shy of her 96th birthday, was less positive. “Those children who were lost, naked, are waiting for you over there” in the afterlife, one person posted on China’s Sina Weibo platform. China’s
‘NO COUNTRY BUMPKIN’: The judge rejected arguments that former prime minister Najib Razak was an unwitting victim, saying Najib took steps to protect his position Imprisoned former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak was yesterday convicted, following a corruption trial tied to multibillion-dollar looting of the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) state investment fund. The nation’s high court found Najib, 72, guilty on four counts of abuse of power and 21 charges of money laundering related to more than US$700 million channeled into his personal bank accounts from the 1MDB fund. Najib denied any wrongdoing, and maintained the funds were a political donation from Saudi Arabia and that he had been misled by rogue financiers led by businessman Low Taek Jho. Low, thought to be the scandal’s mastermind, remains
‘POLITICAL LOYALTY’: The move breaks with decades of precedent among US administrations, which have tended to leave career ambassadors in their posts US President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered dozens of US ambassadors to step down, people familiar with the matter said, a precedent-breaking recall that would leave embassies abroad without US Senate-confirmed leadership. The envoys, career diplomats who were almost all named to their jobs under former US president Joe Biden, were told over the phone in the past few days they needed to depart in the next few weeks, the people said. They would not be fired, but finding new roles would be a challenge given that many are far along in their careers and opportunities for senior diplomats can
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday announced plans for a national bravery award to recognize civilians and first responders who confronted “the worst of evil” during an anti-Semitic terror attack that left 15 dead and has cast a heavy shadow over the nation’s holiday season. Albanese said he plans to establish a special honors system for those who placed themselves in harm’s way to help during the attack on a beachside Hanukkah celebration, like Ahmed al-Ahmed, a Syrian-Australian Muslim who disarmed one of the assailants before being wounded himself. Sajid Akram, who was killed by police during the Dec. 14 attack, and
RSS