7A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2017
Police: Texas church attack stemmed from domestic situation
By JIM VERTUNO
Associated Press
S U T H E R L A N D
SPRINGS, Texas — The
gunman who opened fi re in
a small Texas church, kill-
ing 26 people during Sunday
services, had sent threaten-
ing text messages to his moth-
er-in-law before the attack,
which appeared to stem from a
domestic situation, authorities
said today.
Investigators have con-
cluded that the massacre was
not racially or religiously
motivated, Texas Department
of Public Safety Regional
Director Freeman Martin said.
Based on evidence at the
scene, they believe that Devin
Patrick Kelley died of a self-in-
fl icted gunshot wound after he
crashed his car. He had been
chased by armed bystanders.
T h e
26-year-old
shooter also
used his cell-
phone to tell
his father that
he had been
shot and did
Devin Patrick not think he
Kelley
would sur-
vive, authori-
ties said.
Once the shooting started
at the First Baptist Church in
Sutherland Springs, there was
probably “no way” for con-
gregants to escape, Wilson
County Sheriff Joe D. Tackitt
Jr. said.
The gunman, dressed in
black tactical gear, fi red an
assault rifl e as he walked down
the center aisle during worship
services. He turned around
and continued shooting on his
way out of the building, Tack-
itt said.
The gunman also carried a
handgun, but authorities he did
not know if it was fi red. The
attack claimed multiple mem-
bers of some families and tore
apart a close-knit town of 400
people.
“It’s unbelievable to see
children, men and women, lay-
ing there. Defenseless people,”
Tackitt said.
The dead ranged in age
from 5 to 72 years old. About
20 other people were wounded.
Authorities said Kelley
lived in New Braunfels, about
35 miles north of the Suther-
land Springs church.
A U.S. offi cial told The
Associated Press that Kelley
did not appear to be linked to
organized terrorist groups. The
Nick Wagner/Austin
American-Statesman via AP
Johnnie Langendorff speaks
to reporters about the mass
shooting at the First Bap-
tist Church in Sutherland
Springs, Texas today. Lan-
gendorff says he and an-
other man chased down
the gunman after he fled the
church where he killed more
than two dozen people.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP
Investigators work at the scene of a deadly shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, Sunday.
A man opened fire inside of the church in the small South Texas community on Sunday, killing more than 20 people.
90
130
10
TEXAS
San
Antonio
San
Antonio
123
87
80
Gunman opens fire
inside church
181
97
10 mi
10 km
37
First Baptist Church
Sutherland Springs
Floresville
AP
SOURCE: Maps4News/HERE
offi cial spoke on the condition
of anonymity because the per-
son wasn’t authorized to dis-
cuss the investigation.
Investigators were look-
ing at social media posts Kel-
ley made in the days before
the attack, including one that
appeared to show an AR-15
semi-automatic weapon.
Kelley received a bad con-
duct discharge from the Air
Force for assaulting his spouse
and child and was sentenced
to 12 months of confi ne-
ment after a 2012 court-mar-
tial. Kelley served in Logis-
tics Readiness at Holloman
Air Force Base in New Mex-
ico from 2010 until his 2014
discharge, Air Force spokes-
woman Ann Stefanek said.
The attacker pulled into
a gas station across from the
church, about 30 miles (48.28
kilometers) southeast of San
Antonio, around 11:20 a.m.
Sunday. He crossed the street
and started fi ring the rifl e at the
church, then continued fi ring
after entering the white wood-
frame building, said Free-
man Martin, a regional direc-
tor of the Texas Department of
Safety.
As he left, the shooter was
confronted by an armed res-
ident who “grabbed his rifl e
and engaged that suspect,”
Martin said. A short time later,
the suspect was found dead in
his vehicle at the county line.
Twenty-three of the dead
were found in the church, two
were found outside and one
died after being taken to a hos-
pital, Martin said.
The man who confronted
Kelley had help from another
local resident, Johnnie Lan-
Nick Wagner/Austin American-Statesman via AP
Mona Rodriguez holds her 12-year-old son, J Anthony
Hernandez, during a candlelight vigil held for the victims
of a fatal shooting at the First Baptist Church of Suther-
land Springs, Sunday in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
gendorff, who told KSAT-TV
that he was driving past the
church as the shooting hap-
pened. He didn’t identify the
armed resident but said the
man exchanged gunfi re with
the gunman, then asked to get
in Langendorff’s truck and the
pair followed as the gunman
drove away.
Langendorff said the gun-
man eventually lost control
of his vehicle and crashed.
He said the other man walked
up to the vehicle with his gun
drawn and the suspect did not
move. He stayed there for at
least fi ve minutes, until police
arrived.
“I was strictly just acting on
what’s the right thing to do,”
Langendorff said.
Among those killed was the
church pastor’s 14-year-old
daughter, Annabelle Pomeroy.
Pastor Frank Pomeroy and his
wife, Sherri, were both out of
town when the attack occurred,
Sherri Pomeroy wrote in a text
message.
“We lost our 14-year-old
daughter today and many
friends,” she wrote. “Neither
of us has made it back into
town yet to personally see the
devastation.”
Church member Nick
Uhlig, 34, who was not at
Sunday’s service, told the
AP that his cousin, who was
eight months’ pregnant, and
her in-laws were among those
killed. He later told the Hous-
ton Chronicle that three of his
cousin’s children also were
slain.
President Donald Trump,
who was in Japan, called the
shooting an “act of evil,” later
calling the gunman “a very
deranged individual.”
On Sunday evening, two
sheriff’s vans were parked out-
side the gate of a cattle fence
surrounding the address listed
for Kelley on the rural out-
skirts of New Braunfels, north
of San Antonio.
Ryan Albers, 16, who lives
across the road, said he heard
intensifying gunfi re coming
from that direction in recent
days.
“It was defi nitely not just a
shotgun or someone hunting,”
Albers said.
The church has posted vid-
eos of its Sunday services on
a YouTube channel, raising the
possibility that the shooting
was captured on video.
In a video of its Oct. 8 ser-
vice, a congregant who spoke
and read Scripture pointed to
the Oct. 1 Las Vegas shooting
a week earlier as evidence of
the “wicked nature” of man.
That shooting left 58 dead and
more than 500 injured.
Gov. Greg Abbott called
Sunday’s attack the worst
mass shooting in Texas history.
It came on the eighth anni-
versary of a shooting at Fort
Hood, where 13 people were
killed and 31 others wounded
by a former Army major.
Dogs: ‘I’m also working towards PERS: ‘Some options may overlap or
building a true community space’ be mutually exclusive to implement’
Continued from Page 1A
Continued from Page 1A
a strong passion for working
with dogs who were reactive.”
During her time at Petco, the
store went from near invisibility
within the company to No. 10
in the country for sales in dog
training.
Canine body language
But Foss was most drawn to
working with dogs Petco ruled
had to be turned away.
“I’m really good at reading
canine body language,” Foss
said. “I was bitten twice as a
child and my response was not
to be afraid of dogs, but to learn
everything I could about their
body language.”
She also studied canine
physiology and canine emo-
tional response.
Her
training
method
relies on conditioned emo-
tional response, the Tellington
TTouch Training, praise, pet-
ting, treats, and force-free, posi-
tive interaction.
“I do corrections,” Foss said.
“But not painful corrections.”
For a time, she was a mobile
dog trainer, going to people’s
homes. In 2016 she was offered
the opportunity to buy Arnica-
dia, founded in 2008 by Erica
Curtis.
“I took over the business
from Pam Small, who bought it
in 2013,” Foss said. “It had no
physical location and no group
classes; all work had to be done
outdoors.”
In search of a space that
would accommodate group
classes and be large enough
to have an agility and obstacle
course, Foss lucked out when a
client offered her a lease in one
Eve Marx/For The Daily Astorian
Dogs get a workout using agility equipment.
of his buildings, she said.
Team building
Foss offers clients a menu of
trainings and activities. There’s
individual and group classes for
behavior modifi cation, start-
ing with basic manners and
recall, as well as dog-to-dog
and dog-to-human interaction,
and training to address canine
frustration, overexcitement, and
mild-to-moderate aggression.
Social protocols, she said, can
be taught to dogs of any age.
Then there is profession-
al-level training.
“I offer limited service dog
training. I do public access,”
Foss said.
She aims to be a certi-
fi ed therapy dog evaluator and
already helps the Search and
Rescue team, not as a trainer,
but at their trail practices.
“I’m the person who gets
lost they have to fi nd,” she
laughed.
She also works with dogs
on rally, agility training, and
tracking, as well as CGC, the
acronym for Canine Good
Citizenship.
“I help dogs and their own-
ers become a team,” Foss said.
Training does more than
give the dog a physical work-
out, she said.
“It’s a mental workout, too,
because the dog has to think.
Mental exercise is more tiring
than physical exercise.”
Everyone agrees a tired dog
is a happy dog and an easy dog
to live with.
“I’m also working towards
building a true community
space,” Foss said. “A place
where people can come with
their dogs and play.”
Arnicadia Dog Training is
the fi rst facility on the North
Coast to offer indoor agil-
ity to the public, as well AKC
Trick Dog, and the CGCA and
CGCU certifi cations.
For more information,
go to Arnicadia Dog Train-
ing on Facebook or call 503-
468-2559. It’s located at 2367
S. Roosevelt, right between
Ruby’s and Motel 6.
leaders and people with pub-
lic sector experience, to fi nd
ways to reduce the unfunded
liability by at least $5 billion
over the next fi ve years.
Rather than making rec-
ommendations of specifi c
actions, the task force offered
options it judged to be rea-
sonable and likely to deliver
“a material reduction” in the
liability.
The report looks at a num-
ber of ways that the state
could use available funding
and assets to reduce the lia-
bility. They include:
• Increasing state alco-
hol revenue by raising taxes,
getting better prices from
suppliers and establishing a
demand-based retail pricing
structure. Changes could net
more than $453 million.
• Dedicating one-time
fi nancial windfalls to PERS
liability. Those windfalls
would include proceeds for
increased debt collection,
legal settlements, estate and
capital gains tax revenue in
excess of projections, and
monies collected on fore-
closures in excess of taxes
owed. These windfalls could
be worth $1.2 billion.
• Dedicating proceeds
from the sale of unclaimed
property to PERS for funding
of $200 million.
• Make use of surplus cap-
ital held by SAIF Corpora-
tion, the state’s tax-exempt
workers comp insurance
company. That could yield
more than $500 million.
• Reducing the cash and
short-term investments held
by state-controlled entities.
The task force estimates this
would yield between $750
million and $1.5 billion.
• Privatizing some or all
of Oregon’s eight public uni-
versities by seeking nonprofi t
backing to buy the institu-
tions. The task force esti-
mates privatization could
yield between $250 million
and $1.5 billion.
• Selling state property,
such as the Portland State
Offi ce Building and other
facilities. The task force says
the state could raise more
than $128 million.
• Increasing water right
fees, raising the cap on fi re-
fi ghting costs paid by private
land owners and dedicat-
ing proceeds of timber har-
vest conducted by the state
on federal lands to offset the
PERS liability could raise up
to $330 million.
If all of those measures
were implemented, between
$4.2 billion and $6.4 billion
could be saved, the task force
estimated.
The task force also rec-
ommended setting up a
state incentive program that
would match 25 percent of
the money paid by non-state
public employers to pay
down their liability. Accord-
ing to the report, the incen-
tive program could reduce
the unfunded liability by an
additional $2 billion to $4
billion.
The funding estimates
come with a caveat: The dol-
lar amounts were provided
by agencies affected by the
possible changes, and the
task force didn’t try to inde-
pendently confi rm them.
Neither, in most cases,
did the task force include the
costs of putting the changes
into place or “collateral
fi nancial impacts on public or
private entities.”
“Some options may over-
lap or be mutually exclu-
sive to implement,” the task
force wrote in Nov. 1 letter to
Brown.
Jim Green, executive
director of the Oregon School
Boards Association, called
the report a good initial step.
He emphasized in a pre-
pared statement that the state
needed a “broad approach”
to paying down the PERS
unfunded liability.
Green said one of the
options provided by the task
force — sweeping money left
over at the end of the school
year to pay down PERS debt
— would pose a diffi culty for
schools.
Meanwhile, the head of
the Oregon Education Asso-
ciation, the state’s largest
teachers’ union, praised the
fi ndings.
“We applaud the governor
and the task force for work-
ing to fi nd innovative ways
to reduce costs to employers
without cutting the retirement
benefi ts that are so essential
for recruitment and retention
of teachers, fi rst respond-
ers, nurses, and other public
employees,” said union Pres-
ident John Larson .
Brown’s likely GOP oppo-
nent, Republican State Rep.
Knute Buehler of Bend, dis-
missed the report as “the gov-
ernor’s pawn shop politics”
in a news release through
his campaign, arguing “the
only solution is a change in
leadership.”