Days before shooting, Texas gunman attended church celebration
SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas - The Latest on the church shooting in Texas (all times local):
4:45 p.m.
Authorities in the hometown of the gunman who massacred worshippers at a Texas church are looking into whether they mishandled a sexual assault investigation of him four years ago.
Records released by the Comal County sheriff's office include a June 2013 report of an alleged sexual assault that lists Devin Patrick Kelley as the suspect. The report says deputies were sent around midnight on June 17, 2013, to the New Braunfels, Texas, home of Kelley's family.
Comal County Sheriff Mark Reynolds told The Associated Press Tuesday that it appears sheriff's deputies investigated the case for three months after being called to Kelley's home, but stopped investigating after they believed Kelley had left Texas and moved to Colorado.
The local district attorney says the case was never presented to her.
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3:45 p.m.
Doctors at one of the hospitals that received people injured in the Texas church shooting said their eight patients, who included children, were calm and brave.
Dr. Kenneth Kingdon, noting that any trauma patient will be in shock, told a news conference Tuesday that the patients brought to Connally Memorial Medical Center in Floresville were "a little scared" but calm. He says, "They were all very cooperative and amazingly brave, considering the situation they'd been in."
Twenty-six people were killed and about 20 were injured Sunday when a gunman opened fire at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, located about 13 miles from Floresville. Four of Connally's eight patients were transferred to a San Antonio hospital. Three were treated and released from Connally and one remained Tuesday in stable condition.
Kingdon said that in general, the victims had multiple gunshot wounds.
Dr. Preston Morehead said staff members knew many of the patients already as friends or friends of family or because they were also patients at practices outside the emergency department.
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3:30 p.m.
Wilson County Sheriff Joe Tackitt says the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs told him the man who massacred worshippers had attended the church's Fall Festival on Halloween night and his behavior did not raise any alarms.
Tackitt did not say if the pastor provided any details on that visit, such as what the shooter was doing, whether he wore a costume, or anything else that stood out.
Tackitt told reporters Tuesday: "The pastor told me he was here at the festival Halloween night, saw him in the crowd." Tackitt says the pastor told him Devin Kelley had attended services at the church before.
Kelley opened fire in the church Sunday, killing 26 people.
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3 p.m.
A man who says he's the uncle of the gunman who killed more than two dozen people in a Texas church is calling his nephew a "coward."
Dave Ivey appeared in an interview Monday with North West Digital News, a YouTube channel based in Washington state. Ivey says he hadn't seen Devin Kelley in person for years, but that he maintained contact through Facebook.
Ivey says he attempted to contact Kelley hours before the Sunday shooting after seeing a troubling Facebook post on Kelley's page that said "he wasn't thinking correctly and his head hurt." Ivey says he private messaged Kelley, asking if he was OK, but didn't hear back.
Ivey identified himself as Kelley's uncle on Facebook and in the interview. Kelley's mother's maiden name is Ivey, and the survivors listed in an obituary for Kelley's maternal grandfather include a Dave Ivey of Longview, Washington.
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2:45 p.m.
Authorities say that their tally of those killed in Sunday's shooting at a Texas church includes an unborn baby.
Texas Department of Public Safety officials confirmed Tuesday that their count of 26 victims included the unborn baby of Crystal Holcombe, who was eight months pregnant when she and three of her children were killed at the service. Authorities had previously said the age of the victims ranged from 18 months to 77 years.
Crystal's husband, John Holcombe, was injured in the shooting.
The inclusion of the unborn child means nine of the 26 victims killed were members of the Holcombe family.
Authorities have not officially released any names of victims, saying they were waiting for the medical examiner to confirm their findings.
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2:35 p.m.
The Air Force says federal privacy laws prohibit it from commenting on a police report that the former airman who opened fire at a Texas church had escaped from a New Mexico mental health facility in 2012.
Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek cited privacy regulations under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, which she said apply even though the former airman, Devin P. Kelley, died after the church attack, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot.
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