A woman, armed with a rifle and accompanied by a young boy, walked into celebrity pastor Joel Osteen’s megachurch in Houston on Sunday and opened fire, sending worshippers running for cover.
The shooting sent two people to the hospital: the young boy with the shooter was critically injured and a man in his 50s was shot in the leg. The incident ended with the woman being struck and killed in a shootout with two off-duty police officers who happened to be at the church that day. She died at the scene.
Details of the confrontation remain unclear a day after the tragedy, and police have not released the woman’s identity or a possible motive. It’s also unknown what relationship, if any, the woman had to the boy, and who actually shot him and the man.
Houston police Chief Troy Finner told reporters during a Sunday news conference outside the church that the woman was approximately 30-35 years old and the boy is between four and five years old. They entered the Lakewood Church just before the 2 p.m. Spanish service was set to begin. The woman was wearing a trenchcoat and a backpack, Finner added.
With the young boy still in critical condition at a children’s hospital, Finner denounced the shooter for putting him in harm’s way.
“I will say this,” Finner said. “That female, that suspect, put that baby in danger. I’m going to put that blame on her.”
After the woman was shot by police, she told them she was armed with a bomb. The Houston police bomb squad responded to the scene and authorities searched her vehicle and backpack, but no explosive device was found, Finner said.
“She was also spraying some type of substance on the ground,” Finner added, without providing any further details.
Houston fire Chief Samuel Peña said during Sunday’s news conference that fire authorities were going to “take our time to ensure that any issue, any risk that we see is properly vetted.”
“Right now, I can safely say that we have not found anything that is of concern to our community or to this location, but we’re going to take our time to ensure that we look at every aspect,” Peña added.
Finner praised the quick actions of the two off-duty police officers who shot the woman after she opened fire. Both have been placed on administrative duty, as is protocol in officer-involved shootings, pending an investigation.
One of the officers works for the Houston Police Department, while the other is an agent for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission. They had both been working security at the church on Sunday.
The enormous Lakewood Church — which was previously an arena for the NBA’s Houston Rockets — can seat 16,000 people and is regularly attended by 45,000 people every week, making it the third-largest megachurch in the U.S., according to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. Thankfully, the shooting occurred between services.
Osteen, the celebrity televangelist and businessman who leads the church, spoke at Sunday’s news conference and said the violence could have been much worse if it had happened during the earlier, larger 11 a.m. service.
Osteen added that his congregation is “devastated” and that he would pray for the victims, their families and the shooter. It was not clear where he was at the time of the shooting.
“We’re going to stay strong and we’re going to continue to move forward,” he said during the news conference with police. “There are forces of evil, but the forces that are for us — the forces of God — are stronger than that. So we’re going to keep going strong and just, you know, doing what God’s called us to do: lift people up and give hope to the world.”
In a statement posted to social media, Osteen wrote that people may not “always understand why things like this happen, but we know that God is in control.”
Witnesses of the shooting told reporters they heard dozens of gunshots during the ordeal. Christina Rodriguez, who was inside the church, told Houston television station KTRK that she “started screaming, ‘There’s a shooter, there’s a shooter,'” and then she and others ran to the backside of a library inside the building, then stood in a stairway before they were told it was safe to leave.
Longtime church member Alan Guity, whose family is from Honduras, said he was resting inside the church’s sanctuary before the Spanish service as his mother was working as an usher when he heard gunshots.
The 35-year-old ran to his mother and they both lay flat on the floor and prayed as the gunfire continued. They remained there for about five minutes until someone told them it was safe to evacuate.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a statement saying “our hearts are with those impacted by today’s tragic shooting and the entire Lakewood Church community in Houston. Places of worship are sacred.”
The Lakewood Church has grown tremendously over the past 25 years since Osteen took over after his father’s death in 1999 and introduced an upbeat style of Christian televangelism that has captured a following of millions. His televised sermons reach about 100 countries. The elder Osteen founded the church in a converted feed store in 1959.
— With files from The Associated Press
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