A chilling video appears to capture the moment police say a female shooter with a child in tow opened fire on Joel Osteen’s Houston-area cathedral – before she was killed by off-duty police.
In the clip shared on XA bearded man with glasses was seen speaking at the start of a Spanish-language service at Osteen’s Lakewood Church Sunday afternoon, when suddenly he was interrupted by a barrage of gunfire.
The speaker briefly tried to continue, but then another shot echoed throughout the church, prompting him to turn and see the panicked crowd fleeing down the escalators behind him.
The broadcast of the sermon then cut to a blue screen displaying the Lakewood Church logo.
Police said a woman in her 30s, dressed in a trench coat and carrying a backpack and a long gun, entered the cathedral just before 2pm with a 5-year-old boy and opened fire.
A screenshot from the video shows a Lakewood Church official speaking at the start of Sunday’s Spanish service when gunshots rang out. The church worker turned to see parishioners running for their lives down the escalator. The shooting was carried out by a woman in her 30s with a 5-year-old boy on Sunday, police said. Reuters
Two off-duty officers guarding the church – a Houston police officer and an agent with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission – returned fire and fatally shot the woman, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said at a news briefing Sunday.
The boy who was with the woman was seriously injured in the shooting, but it is not clear how he was hit.
Asked if the child was shot by one of the officers, Finner declined to speculate but said: “The woman, the suspect, put the baby in danger. I will put the blame on him.”
Two off-duty officers confronted the active shooter and killed him at the scene. AP Carlos Gonzalez, a worship singer, hugs a colleague after the church shooting. Reuters
The youngster was taken to Texas Children’s Hospital. His relationship to the woman was not immediately known.
A man in his 50s, described as a bystander, was shot in the hip and was hospitalized in stable condition, Finner said.
Before the woman with the gun died from her injuries, she poured an unknown substance on the floor and told officers there was a bomb, but a search of the area found no explosives.
Pastor Joe Osteen said that the violence could have been worse had the shooting occurred during the service earlier. via REUTERS
As of Monday morning, there was still no information on the possible motive behind the violence.
The ordeal happened between English-language services and Spanish-language ads at the cathedral.
Pastor Joel Osteen, 60, said during a Sunday press briefing that the tragedy could have been worse if the shooting had occurred during an earlier and larger Sunday morning service.
“I can only imagine what can be imagined if it happened during the 11 o’clock service,” he said at the scene.
The church, founded by Osteen’s late father, has a regular attendance of 45,000 people each week, making it the third largest megachurch in the US, according to the Hartford Institute for Religious Research.
With Postal wire
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
