Texas Church Gunman Escaped a Mental Health Facility and Made Death Threats

‘Was a Danger to Himself and Others’

Just how dangerous was Devin Patrick Kelley before he slaughtered 26 people, mostly children, on Sunday while they were praying in a Texas church?

We already know Kelley was discharged for bad conduct from the Air Force after being court martialed for repeatedly violently assaulting his wife and step son. He fractured the toddler’s skull. 

The New York Times is now reporting Kelley “escaped from a psychiatric hospital while he was in the Air Force, after making death threats against his superiors and trying to smuggle weapons onto the base where he was stationed, a 2012 police report shows.”

The report filed by the El Paso officers says that the person who reported Mr. Kelley missing from the hospital advised them that he “suffered from mental disorders,” and that he “was attempting to carry out death threats” against “his military chain of command.” The man “was a danger to himself and others as he had already been caught sneaking firearms onto Holloman Air Force Base,” it added. The police report was published on Tuesday by KPRC, a Houston television station.

There’s more.

In 2014 he “beat a dog with his fists,” according to The Denver Post.

A witness said he “began punching the dog with a closed fist near the head and neck area. She stated she witnessed four to five punches and then the male suspect grabbed the dog by the neck and drug him away,” an El Paso County deputy report says.

A deputy said another witness could hear Kelley “yelling at the dog and while he was striking it, the dog was yelping and whining.” Kelley “then picked up the dog by the neck into the air and threw it onto the ground and then drug him away to lot 60,” according to the deputy.

El Paso County Judge Daniel Scott Wilson sentenced Kelley to a deferred probationary sentence and ordered him to pay $368 in restitution. Wilson also ordered Kelley to pay a genetic testing surcharge of $2.50 and $78 to the victim’s assistance fund, court records say.

The cruelty to animals charge was dismissed on March 31, 2016, after Kelley successfully completed his sentence, court records indicate.

The Washington Post reports Kelley this past summer “worked briefly as an unarmed night security guard at a Schlitterbahn water park in New Braunfels, the company said. He passed a Texas Department of Public Safety criminal background check before beginning work there, a spokeswoman said, though she added that Kelley was fired in July — as the season was reaching its peak — because he was ‘not a good fit.'”

He was also able to pass a background check that allowed him to work for HEB, a Texas grocery chain, in New Braunfels. Company spokeswoman Dya Campos said he worked there for two months in 2013 and quit; she was unsure of his position there.

Kelley, we learned Monday, was able to buy guns because the Air Force neglected to send his criminal domestic violence history to the FBI to enter into the national database.

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