Chilling video captures the moments before a female gunman with a child opened fire at Joel Osteen’s Houston-area megachurch and was fatally shot by an off-duty police officer, police said. It seems like it is.
Inside the clip Shared by XOn Sunday afternoon, a bearded man wearing glasses began speaking at the start of a Spanish-language service at Lakewood Church in Osteen that was suddenly interrupted by gunfire.
The speaker tries to continue for a moment, but then another gunshot echoes through the church, and he turns to see a panicked crowd fleeing down the escalator behind him.
The sermon broadcast then switches to a blue screen, displaying the Lakewood Church logo.
Police said a woman in her 30s wearing a trench coat and carrying a backpack and a long rifle entered the large church with a 5-year-old boy and opened fire just before 2 p.m.
Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said at a news conference Sunday that two off-duty police officers guarding the church — a Houston police officer and a Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission employee — returned fire and shot and killed the woman. Stated.
The boy who was with the woman was seriously injured in the gunfight, but it is unclear how he was struck by the gunfire.
Asked if the child was shot by one of the officers, Finner declined to speculate, but said, “That woman, that suspect, put her baby in danger. We’re going to hold her accountable for that.” .”
The boy was taken to Texas Children’s Hospital. His relationship with the woman was not immediately known.
The bystander, a man in his 50s, was shot in the hip and is hospitalized in stable condition, Finner said.
Before dying from her injuries, the woman with the gun poured an unknown substance on the floor and told officers there was a bomb, but a search of the area found no explosives.
As of Monday morning, no word yet on a possible motive behind the violence.
The harrowing ordeal occurred during English and Spanish services at the megachurch.
Pastor Joel Osteen, 60, said at a news conference Sunday that the tragedy could have been worse had the shooting occurred earlier and during a large late Sunday morning service.
“If that had happened during the 11 o’clock service, I could only imagine,” he said at the scene.
The church, founded by Osteen’s late father, regularly draws 45,000 people each week, making it the third-largest megachurch in the United States, according to the Hartford Institute of Religion.
with post wire
