Lakewood Church shooting – updates: Mother-in-law blasts Texas gun laws over ‘preventable’ tragedy

Moreno has a long criminal record filled with previous arrests for assault, marijuana possession, forgery, theft, evading and unlawful carrying of a weapon, according to criminal history records obtained by Fox26.

She was first arrested in 2005 on a misdemeanour charge.

Her latest arrest before the shooting occurred in 2022, according to the records, for unlawfully carrying a weapon and received two days in jail.

Moreno used several aliases, using both male and female names. However, police said that: “All the investigation to this point, she has been identified the entire time as female.”

One of her aliases was the name Jeffrey Escalante – and several of her arrests are under this name.

There are questions circulating about how Moreno was able to legally purchase a firearm, especially as recently as December, due to her history of mental health concerns.

Police said on Monday that Moreno was placed under an emergency detention order by officers in 2016 and has a mental health history “documented” by Houston police.

Divorce records from Montgomery County obtained by local outlets also painted a picture of an alleged history of mental health issues.

The records state that Child Protective Services investigated the family a number of times and found that Moreno was diagnosed as “schizophrenic” and had a “history of erratic paranoid, stalking behaviour and was diagnosed as exhibiting Munchausen by proxy”.

No one else was killed in the shooting, although a seven-year-old boy is in critical condition

She once stored a loaded gun in her then-three-year-old son’s diaper bag, the records state.

The records also state that Moreno’s ex-husband is a registered sex offender and that her son has special needs.

On her social media accounts, the shooter described herself as the founder of a real estate and financial services firm, according to ABC13 and CNN.

The motive for the shooting has not yet been determined by police.

Authorities said they had “uncovered antisemitic writings” penned by Moreno. On top of this, police noted that there appeared to be a “familial dispute” between Moreno and her ex-husband’s family — some of whom are Jewish.

Police also said at Monday’s press conference that a sticker reading “Palestine” was stuck on the weapon used in the shooting.

In addition to a reported mental health history, Genesse Moreno also had a criminal history – dating from 2005 through 2022 – and she used several aliases including both male and female names, police said. However, “all the investigation to this point, she has been identified the entire time as female”, police said.

Interestingly, most of her arrests are listed under the name Jeffery Escalante — with the middle name Genesse.

The 2022 misdemeanour weapons charges, however, listed her as Genesse Moreno. Her driver’s license also used this name, police said.

Other outlets revealed that in March 2020, Moreno posted a screenshot of a letter from the megachurch thanking her for her donation. The Independent has not independently verified the post, as her social media accounts have been taken down, but has contacted the Houston Police Department.

The investigation is still ongoing. Police stressed that Moreno acted as a “lone wolf.”

The former mother-in-law of the Lakewood Church shooter has slammed Texasgun laws and the state’s child protective services for failing her seven-year-old grandson, as he lies fighting for his life in hospital.

Genesse Moreno, 36, drove with her young son to Joel Osteen’s megachurch in Houston on Sunday 11 February, where she then opened fire with an AR-15 rifle.

Moreno was fatally shot by two off-duty police officers who returned fire.

Her seven-year-old son was also caught in the crosshairs, and suffered a gunshot wound to the head.

Walli Carranza, Moreno’s former mother-in-law, has since taken to Facebook to speak about the “completely preventable horror” the family is now facing.

Read the full story:

Good morning. More evidence has emerged about Lakewood Church shooter Genesse Moreno and her long history of alleged mental health problems and brushes with the law.

According to court documents seen by The Independent, Moreno – who reportedly suffered from schizophrenia – was repeatedly accused of endangering and abusing her young son, as well as abusing her husband.

But a social worker told relatives that he didn't have the "bandwidth" to deal with her case and that Texas law meant there was nothing he could do about her habit of buying, and allegedly threatening people with, firearms.

Meanwhile, high-profile conservatives including Don Jr and Ted Cruz have embraced the groundless claim that Moreno was transgender, even after it was rebuked by Houston police.

We'll continue to update you as more information emerges.

Genesse Moreno’s neighbours say that she intimidated them with guns and made Nazi salutes for several years before the shooting, my colleague Andrea Cavallier reports.

Residents in Conroe – a north Houston suburb – told local reports that Moreno was often seen with multiple guns, harassing and threatening them and making them fearful in their own neighbourhood.

“Her way of intimidation was to bring the gun cases in and out, crossbows. She’d come out, have her gun cases, do heil Hitler, flip you off, call you the b-word, or something. It was something every day,” one neighbour told KPRC, a Houston TV news station.

Another neighbour said Moreno had scrawled swastikas on her property and taunted her and her grandchildren multiple times. Another claimed she tried to run them over.

“I’ve been through hell. I have reported this, reported this and its gone on deaf ears,” said one neighbour, who gave her name as Jill. “I’ve had psychological officers out here that won’t answer their door. They won’t do anything. [They say,] ‘until she hurts you there is nothing we can do’.”

You can read Andrea’s full story here.

A Texas child services investigator bluntly told the shooter’s family that did not have the "bandwidth" or legal authority to handle her case, according to court documents seen by The Independent.

An affidavit filed by Genesse Moreno’s former mother in law Walli Carranza alleges that Moreno, who reportedly suffered from schizophrenia, was abusive towards her former husband and her child, and was investigated in January 2020 for child neglect and endangerment.

Despite this, an investigator from the county allegedly told Ms Carranza: “I have children who were set on fire by their parents, so I don’t have the bandwidth to handle the case of a mother who can’t remember to shut the back door.

"I don’t know why they assigned this to me. Guns are legal in Texas, and you don’t have to have a license for them. She has the right to own 40 of them and we can’t do anything about it.”

Ms Carranza has accused local authorities of failing to prevent an entirely preventable tragedy.

Court documents filed by Genesse Moreno's former mother-in-law paint a bleak picture of Moreno's life and her treatment of her young son.

In an affidavit filed in 2022, and seen by The Independent, Walli Carranza alleged that Moreno had moved house every few months since her son was born in 2017, returning regularly to her mother's house in order to collect a disability check.

The document accuses Moreno of repeatedly lying about where she and her son were living, and "constantly threaten[ing]" to abduct him out of the state or out of the country.

It also accuses Moreno of filing a false birth certificate which did not list her ex-husband Enrique Carranza as the father, claiming instead that the father was dead and that she did not know his name.

Despite this, Ms Carranza says that her son's hands were tied because he did not want to file criminal charges against her lest she be deported from the US, potentially along with her severely disabled son.

Texas politicians have long refused to consider so-called "red flag laws", which gun control activists claim could help prevent tragedies like this one.

Red flag laws allow a judge to temporarily ban someone from buying or possessing a firearm if their behaviour posses an imminent risk to themselves or others.

21 states currently have such laws on the books, with one study finding that California's law was applied to 58 people who threatened mass shootings within its first three years.

But even though 65 per cent of Texans supported such laws as of 2022, the state’s Republican-dominated legislature has steered well clear of them.

According to The Texas Tribune, governor Greg Abbott tried to pass a red flag law in the aftermath of the 2018 Santa Fe school shooting, but had to abandon the idea after a backlash from his rightward flank.

And in an interview with ABC 13 on Tuesday, State representative Matthew Schaefer called such efforts "pre-crime laws".

"When people talk about red flag laws, they're talking about taking away someone's Second Amendment rights before any crime has been committed," Mr Schaefer said.

"If a crime is being alleged or being committed, our law covers that.”