| Lakewood Church shooting | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Location | Lakewood Church Houston, Texas, U.S. |
| Date | February 11, 2024 c. 1:53 p.m. (CST; UTC−06:00) |
Attack type | Shooting |
| Weapon | AR-15–style rifle [1] |
| Deaths | 1 (the perpetrator) |
| Injured | 2 |
| Perpetrator | Genesse Ivonne Moreno [2] |
On February 11, 2024, a shooting occurred at Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, perpetrated by 36-year-old Genesse Moreno.
Witnesses at Lakewood Church stated that they heard multiple shots fired around 2:00 pm CST, the start time of the Spanish-language services. [3] [4]
The shooter, Genesse Moreno, claimed to have a bomb in her backpack, but no bomb was subsequently found. [5] [6] She also sprayed "some type of substance on the ground". [7] She shot a 47-year-old man in the leg, wounding him. [8] [5] [9]
Moreno said "Stay calm, all I need is help," [10] then proceeded to fire more rounds.
Two off-duty officers, serving as security at the church, killed Moreno after she pointed an AR-15 at them. Moreno's seven-year-old son was shot in the exchange of gunfire. [6] The child was taken to the Texas Children's Hospital in critical condition. [5] Moreno was shot and killed four minutes after entering the church. [10]
The Federal Bureau of Investigation says she fired around 30 shots during the shooting. [11] [12]
Reports of a second shooter caused some alarm among Houston residents, leading police to evacuate businesses in the commercial district. Police confirmed that there was no second shooter. [13]
The wounded 47-year-old man was released from the hospital by February 12. [6] The seven-year-old had a portion of the frontal lobe of his brain surgically removed, [14] [15] and had his breathing tube removed after 13 days. [15] His grandmother Rabbi Walli Carranza urged people to "demand that no one's second amendment rights overtake an innocent child's inherent right to life". [15]
Camera footage from body cameras and surveillance cameras was released by the police. [10]
Police confirmed the following day that they identified the shooter as 36-year-old Genesse Ivonne Moreno (August 21, 1987 [16] – February 11, 2024). [17] Moreno was raised in Conroe, Texas, and had both a criminal record and documented mental health issues. [6] [18] Carranza, her ex-mother-in-law, said that she had schizophrenia that caused her to become violent, [19] and claimed that "What was needed for years was a collaborative mental health and law enforcement response". [10] She legally obtained her weapon in December 2023; Carranza criticized the lack of a red flag law. [19]
Carranza unsuccessfully petitioned for conservatorship of Moreno's son, the injured child, in 2022. [20]
As of February 19,2024 [update] , no motive is known. [6] Police confirmed that Moreno's AR-15–style rifle had a "Palestine" sticker on it and claimed that antisemitic writings had been discovered. [21] [22] According to the Anti-Defamation League, Moreno had made multiple comments propagating anti-semitic conspiracy theories, praising Osama bin Laden, and promoting terrorist organizations. [23]
Moreno previously used the alias Jeffery Escalante; although she at no point was identified as anything other than a cisgender female, her use of this alias caused far-right commentators, including Libs of TikTok and Fox News, [24] to spread misinformation claiming that the shooter was a transgender woman. [19] [25] [26] Fox News later edited its article to remove the claim. [24] Republican politicians, including Ted Cruz, [27] Donald Trump Jr., [27] Marjorie Taylor Greene, [24] and Josh Hawley [24] promoted the claim. This continued an ongoing trend of conservative commentators claiming that the LGBT community is to blame for increasing gun violence in America. [27] However, this claim contradicts statistics that trans people are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violence. [24] [19]
Lakewood Church asked people to "pray for Lakewood and our community". [8] Joel Osteen, its pastor, said: "Of course, we're devastated. We don't understand why these things happen. We're going to pray for the 5-year-old little boy, the lady who is deceased and the other gentleman. We're going to stay strong and continue to move forward." [5]
The Lakewood Church Central Campus is the main facility of Lakewood Church, a megachurch in Houston, Texas, five miles southwest of Downtown Houston and next to Greenway Plaza.
Lakewood Church is a non-denominational evangelical Christian megachurch located in Houston, Texas. It is among the largest congregations in the United States, averaging about 45,000 attendees per week. The 16,800-seat Lakewood Church building, home to four English-language services and two Spanish-language services per week, is located at the former Compaq Center. Joel Osteen is the senior pastor of Lakewood Church with his wife, Victoria, who serves as co-pastor.
Joel Scott Osteen is an American pastor, televangelist, businessman, and author based in Houston, Texas, United States. Known for his weekly televised services and several best-selling books, Osteen is one of the more prominent figures associated with prosperity theology and the Word of Faith movement.
KTBU is a television station licensed to Conroe, Texas, United States, serving as the Houston area outlet for the digital multicast network Quest. It is owned and operated by Tegna Inc. alongside CBS affiliate KHOU. The two stations share studios on Westheimer Road near Uptown Houston; KTBU's transmitter is located near Missouri City, in unincorporated northeastern Fort Bend County. Previously, KTBU maintained separate facilities on Old Katy Road in the northwest side of Houston, while the KHOU studios only housed KTBU's master control and some internal operations.
John Hillery Osteen was an American pastor who founded Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. His television program ran for 16 years and was broadcast to millions in the U.S. and nearly 50 countries weekly.
Jerry James Moses Jr., better known as J.J. Moses, is an American former professional football player. He played wide receiver at Iowa State University and for the Green Bay Packers, Houston Texans, and Arizona Cardinals in the National Football League (NFL). During his career, he was listed as the shortest player in the NFL, at 5'6".
Ruben Montoya Cantu was an American murderer who was executed for a murder he committed when he was 17 years old. During the years following the conviction, the surviving victim, the co-defendant, the district attorney, and the jury forewoman made public statements that cast doubt on Cantu's guilty verdict.
Victoria Osteen is an American author and the co-pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. She is the wife of Joel Osteen and the daughter-in-law of John Osteen.
Christopher Jordan Dorner was a former officer of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) who, beginning on February 3, 2013, committed a series of killings against the LAPD in Orange County, Los Angeles County, Riverside County and San Bernardino County in the U.S. state of California. The victims were law enforcement officers and the daughter of a retired police captain. Dorner killed four people and wounded three others. On February 12, Dorner killed himself after a shootout with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department deputies in the San Bernardino Mountains.
The Church of Wells is an American religious group considered by some to be a cult located in Wells, Texas. The group is led by Sean Morris, Jacob Gardner, and Ryan Ringnald, former street preachers who are all in their early thirties. It has approximately ninety members, many being young adults and children.
On November 5, 2017, Devin Kelley shot and killed 26 people and wounded 22 others at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Kelley was shot and wounded by a local resident, then killed himself following a car chase. It is the deadliest mass shooting in Texas history and the deadliest at an American place of worship, surpassing the Charleston church shooting of 2015.
On May 18, 2018, a school shooting occurred at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas, United States, in the Houston metropolitan area. Ten people – eight students and two teachers – were fatally shot, and thirteen others were wounded. Dimitrios Pagourtzis, a 17-year-old student at the school, was taken into custody. The shooting is the eighth-deadliest school shooting in the United States.
Atatiana Koquice Jefferson, a 28-year-old woman, was fatally shot inside her home by a police officer in Fort Worth, Texas, United States, in the early morning of October 12, 2019. Police arrived at her home after a neighbor called a non-emergency number, stating that Jefferson's front door was open. Police body camera footage showed officers walking outside the home with flashlights for a few minutes then one officer yells, "Put your hands up! Show me your hands!", while discharging his weapon through a window. Police found a handgun near Jefferson's body, which according to her eight-year-old nephew, she was pointing toward the window before being shot. On October 14, 2019, Officer Aaron Dean, the shooter, resigned from the Fort Worth Police Department and was arrested on a murder charge. On December 20, 2019, Dean was indicted for murder. Jefferson was black and the officer who shot her is white, prompting news outlets to compare Jefferson's shooting to the September 2018 murder of Botham Jean in nearby Dallas.
Paul Kent Osteen is an American vascular surgeon and medical missionary. Osteen practices both as a volunteer surgeon in remote parts of Sub-Saharan Africa and as an advocate for humanitarian action by US physicians to under-served and desperate areas specifically in Africa. He is the older brother of Pastor Joel Osteen.
The Uvalde school shooting was a mass shooting on May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, United States, where 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, a former student at the school, fatally shot 19 students and 2 teachers, while injuring 17 others.
Gonzalo Artemio Lopez was an American fugitive, mass murderer, and prison escapee who killed a total of six people in separate murders in 2005 and 2022. In 2005, Lopez kidnapped and murdered a man in Weslaco, Texas. He was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison. In May 2022, Lopez received international attention when he escaped from prison custody by assaulting a corrections officer and fleeing from a prison bus. He became a wanted fugitive and evaded authorities for three weeks. On June 2, Lopez broke into a ranch and murdered five people from the same family, including three children, before stealing weapons and a pickup truck. Later that same day, police spotted Lopez and engaged in a shootout with him after a high-speed chase, where he was fatally shot during the exchange of gunfire.
The following is a list of events of the year 2019 in Texas.
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