On Sunday afternoon, a woman opened fire shortly before a Spanish-language Sunday afternoon service began. The woman was shot and killed at the scene by two off-duty police officers who were working as security for the church at the time..
The 36-year-old woman reportedly entered the church just before 2 PM with her 7-year-old son who was shot in the head and critically wounded in the shooting incident and remains in the hospital in critical condition. It’s unclear who fired the shot that injured the child. A 57-year-old man, who is not believed to be involved in the incident, was also shot in the leg but has been released from the hospital.
Early media reports described the woman as a biological male presenting as a woman, i.e. a “transgender woman”. She was variously listed as male and female in official records.Israel365 News does not publish the names of mass-killers. In a news conference on Monday, investigators identified the assailant was a woman and the biological mother of the young boy wounded in the shooting.
A sticker with the word, “Palestine” was on the AR 15 used by the assailant. The assailant threatened that she had a bomb, but a search of her bag revealed a 22 caliber rifle but did not contain explosives.
The shooter was an undocumented alien originally from El Salvador. Despite being an undocumented alien with a criminal record, both guns were legally purchased.
Police said the suspect had “a mental health history” and six previous arrests dating back to 2005. She was put under an emergency detention order by Houston police in 2016. Police stated that they recovered antisemitic writings from the assailant’s car used to arrive at the scene but that they still consider the motive behind the shooting to be undetermined.
She had previously been married to a man but it ended in a contentious divorce in 2022 and a bitter custody battle. Her former mother-in-law filed an affidavit explaining that the shooter’s immigrant status prevented her son from filing a criminal complaint with the police.
“[My son] has been reticent to file the criminal charges against his wife; now his former wife because, as she is not a US citizen,” the mother-in-law’s affidavit said, and “as she already has had criminal convictions, she would likely be deported if convicted of the 3rd degree felony that stems from filing a fraudulent birth certificate.”
“We do believe that there was a familial dispute that has taken place between her ex-husband and her ex-husband’s family,” some of whom are Jewish, police said.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said in a statement, “I will not make any assumptions because information continues to come in as to what motivated the shooter, but I am asking that the investigation look into whether it was a hate crime, given the shooting took place at an all-Spanish service.”
Houston Mayor John Whitmire on Monday addressed the city’s “diverse community,” promising, “We are going to provide you protection.” He said security will be increased at Houston’s churches, synagogues and mosques.
Lakewood Church, founded by John Osteen and currently run by his son Joel, is a 16,800-seat non-denominational evangelical megachurch located in Houston, Texas. It is among the largest congregations in the United States, averaging about 45,000 attendees per week.
