Neighbors of the gunman who opened fire on Joel Osteen’s Lakewood church and was later shot and killed by police detail years of harassment and intimidation in the small two-street community she faced. , said law enforcement and elected officials failed to adequately respond to their close-range attacks. Constant protests.
Five women who lived near Genes Yvonne Moreno in Conroe, Texas, a city more than 80 miles north of the Houston megachurch, testified. FOX 26 Houston How Mr. Moreno has tormented a usually tight-knit community over the past four years.
Jill, who lives next door, said Moreno had repeatedly filed false police reports that he and others were stalking Moreno and a 7-year-old boy, said to be Moreno’s son.
Moreno, who is from El Salvador and has a long criminal history and previously used the name Jeffrey Escalante Moreno, dragged a 7-year-old boy into the megachurch before opening fire, and the boy remains hospitalized in critical condition. There is.
“For four years, I went through hell. I reported this, I reported this, I reported this, and it fell on deaf ears,” Jill told the outlet. “We had psych workers here. They wouldn’t answer the door and they wouldn’t do anything. They said, ‘Until she hurts you, there’s nothing we can do.’ People keep saying, “If you see something, say something.” “That’s bull—. Because I went through it. I talked to everyone. I probably called all of your news stations to get someone to cover this.” Sho.”
“No one is doing anything. No one is calling me back. And yet everyone is still on these stations saying, ‘Watch something, say something.’ “No one should have died. No one should have been hurt. This issue should have been addressed years ago. And here we are again,” Jill added.
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“We knew it was only a matter of time before she did something,” said Linda Jutta, another neighbor. “We did something and said something.”
The suspect Houston police say opened fire on the Lakewood church, Genes Yvonne Moreno, used multiple aliases, including Jeffrey Escalante Moreno. Moreno has been arrested six times dating back to 2005. (Texas Department of Public Safety/Kirk Side/Houston Chronicle, via AP)
“We can’t do more than what we’ve done. We tried to stop this. We tried to help her, we tried to help us, and we tried to help the public. I tried to help people. I have to do something. I don’t know what it takes.”
Several neighbors remembered authorities saying they remembered Mr. Moreno wearing the same trench coat he was wearing before the shooting at the Lakewood church.
Moreno was often seen coming and going from the house wearing a trench coat and carrying a gun case or a long rifle, police said.
Gill recalled witnessing Moreno pull the sedan into the driveway on the day of the shooting and cover the vehicle with a blue tarp so cameras wouldn’t be able to see what Moreno had placed inside.
“It looked really weird and I thought it was weird, but I just thought she was weird. So I didn’t know what this kid was doing, so I just watched her back and left it at that,” Jill said. said.
From left, Lakewood Church Pastor Joel Osteen, Police Chief Troy Finner, Fire Chief Samuel Pena, and Mayor John Whitmire are the victims of the Feb. 11, 2024, shooting at Lakewood Church. Participate in the press conference. (Kirk Side/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
“Her method of intimidation was to bring gun cases in and out, bring crossbows. You know, she would come out and put gun cases there and put a ‘Long live Hitler’ sign. or run you over” or b—-. You know, it was a daily thing,” Jill said. “There were so many things going on and it just seemed to keep escalating. And when she started targeting other women in the neighborhood, we all got really concerned because we didn’t know how far it was going to spread.” He wasn’t the only one being targeted.”
Authorities said a search of Moreno’s home found anti-Semitic references. It also pointed out that Moreno’s former in-laws are Jewish and that the rifle used in the megachurch attack had a “Palestinian” sticker on it.
Following the shooting incident, the child’s grandmother issued a statement It read in part: “Yesterday, my ex-daughter-in-law lashed out against Israel and Jews with a pro-Palestinian rant that has nothing to do with Judaism or Islam. No! But this is what happens when reckless and irresponsible media informs people that “people with severe mental illness have an excuse to commit violence,” she said.
The statement also said:[t]He blames Montgomery and Harris County Child Protective Services for refusing to strip custody of a woman with a known, untreated mental illness and for not having strong red flag laws preventing her from taking possession. Located in Texas. Or owning a gun. ”
The Lakewood church shooter has been identified as Genesee Yvonne Moreno. “Palestine” written on a gun
Another neighbor said she was walking to the park with her grandchildren when Moreno rushed past them, sometimes turning towards them, almost hitting them and laughing.
According to her neighbor Heather, Moreno was held at gunpoint on July 4, 2022, after she apparently took issue with watering her lawn after dark.
Farah, another longtime resident, said Moreno began recording her while she was going to the mailbox or playing outside with her granddaughter. She said Moreno began driving by her home after learning that she worked as an instructional assistant in Moreno’s child’s classroom. The woman also filed a false police report that Moreno was stalking Moreno’s son, she said.
“When I was living here since 2014, she called the school to say I was stalking her home,” Farah said.
“I mean, he’s a good kid,” she said of the boy. “He was a very nice person. He didn’t speak much because he couldn’t understand the language. Kids get frustrated when they can’t express their emotions, so some days are good and some days are bad. But other than that, he was fine. She said Moreno withdrew the boy from school in October.
Gill said she could see swastikas and gang signs held up by Moreno from her bedroom window.
Jill said Moreno also had a baby monitor installed on their shared fence. Next door neighbors say Moreno set his Wi-Fi address to “Kill Jill” and continued to honk his horn and play rap music with threatening lyrics for hours while they were outside gardening. .
Houston police officers watch over people evacuated outside a Lakewood church on Sunday after a shooting. (Karen Warren/Houston Chronicle, via AP)
“One of the songs had a lyric that said, ‘Someone’s gonna get fucked up tonight,’ and she would back it up and listen to it on repeat for hours,” Jill said.
“This happened every week. She was chasing me,” Jill said. “At first it was always like, ‘Oh, it’s because I’m trans.’ Then it was, ‘Because we’re Mexican.’ The reason was “because we are black.” And each time, depending on what she was talking about that day, she would change the reason you teased her. (Investigators identified Moreno as a woman and the biological mother of the 7-year-old child at a news conference Monday.)
Gill said Moreno submitted a false report to the post office that her mail was not delivered because she is transgender. But in reality, Gill said, Moreno had parked his car blocking the mailbox. The mailman, the same man who had been delivering Jill’s mail for about five or six years and who has a transgender son, came to Moreno’s front door to clear the air after the report. .
But Jill says Moreno made him angry. Then, the mailman “came to my house and said, ‘Jill, this woman next door is after you.'” She quit the next day, the woman said.
Lakewood church shooting: Woman with child sets fire inside Joel Ostin’s Texas megachurch
“She even called the Conroe Police Department and raised Kane with her and said, ‘Are you guys going to do anything? Are you going to wait until I get a call to say my mom’s dead?'” Jill said on FOX. told 26. “I’m getting really scared.”
Jill said that two years ago during Thanksgiving, when her grandchildren were visiting from Minnesota, Moreno’s dog was so aggressive that it even shook the heavy metal fence. So, since he didn’t want to play in the backyard, he decided to do some crafting in his driveway. That’s when Gill said Moreno pulled out a rifle to threaten the children.
“She wanted to scare my grandkids, so she went out and got a long rifle. OK, they’re from Minnesota, they shoot, they know what’s going on. So she went to the backyard and opened the blinds, which had never been opened before. When they opened four years ago, she pulled out a rifle as if she was going to shoot someone,” Jill said. said.
Jutta said the situation in her neighborhood had become so bad that she and a group of women took time off from work to go to court.
“Five of us, five families are going through this situation. We decided we have to do something about this,” she said. “We talked to commissioners, we talked to elected officials, we waited. Some of the women talked to police. We waited for officers to call headquarters. I waited. Then I got a guy from headquarters talking about mental health. He was.”
The women said they also went to the real estate association, spoke with the manager and its attorney, and sent a letter, but no serious action was taken.
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Law enforcement has not released a motive, but police described Moreno as a “lone wolf” who was not affiliated with any group.
Moreno’s former stepmother said she sought advice from Lakewood’s pastoral staff during a bitter custody battle in 2022, according to court documents.
