A deranged anti-Semite from El Salvador dragged his son into Joel Osteen’s Houston-area megachurch on February 11 and began shooting him wildly. The attempted massacre of Jennice Moreno was quickly thwarted by a 28-year-old off-duty Houston Police Department officer and a 38-year-old Texas Liquor Commission officer.
houston police department
Published video A scene from Monday’s incident shows Genes Moreno breaking into Lakewood Church and confronting the heroes there.
Surveillance camera footage outside the church shows Jenness Moreno, who also identified himself as Jeffrey Escalante, pulling his 7-year-old son Samuel out of a white SUV, getting dressed and leaving for the church’s 2 p.m. Spanish service. They are shown marching to the entrance just before the opening. He is wearing a trench coat and carrying a backpack.
Another photo shows people peacefully gathering in the west hallway of the church scattering in response to gunshots. As churchgoers and others evacuate, HPD Officer Christopher Moreno rushes toward the commotion.
The gunman, seen from a different vantage point and ignoring his son’s pleas and outstretched arms, fired at Officer Moreno, who reacted in kind and hid in a doorway from the hallway. Genes Moreno continued marching with a rifle in hand, passing police officers who have been with the unit since January 2023.
HPD Deputy Chief Keith Seefaus said the suspect attempted to enter the sanctuary, but fortunately the entrance door was locked.
The video shows TABC police officer Adrian Herrera, who was working as a security guard at the church at the time, drawing a handgun and approaching the gunman from behind with at least three other people in tow.
Genes Moreno noticed an armed presence behind him and opened fire, nearly hitting Herrera.
When Herrera returned fire with his duty weapon, Moreno began shooting at the backpack on the ground with his rifle.houston chronicle
shown At the time, she said she was spraying a substance on the floor, which Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña later determined was not dangerous.
Officer Moreno’s body camera footage captured the gunman telling him, “There’s a bomb in this bag. Stop shooting.”
The guard begs the gunman to drop the gun, but she refuses, shouting, “The bomb is going to go off.”
The gunman repeated, “I’m going to blow this whole damn place up.”
While Genes Moreno appeared to be preparing the next stage of his attack, Herrera continued to advance and finally dropped the shooter with the decisive shot. After staggering on the ground for a moment near the suspected explosive device, Moreno went rigid.
Seven-year-old Samuel was shot in the head.
HPD Officer Garcia captured some of the chaos surrounding the incident on his body camera and is seen running to the injured child and praying over his body.
“Father God, please bring him close to You,” Garcia says. “Bring him closer to you.”
On the way to the gunfight, Garcia prayed similarly: “God, just be with us. Please forgive us our sins.”
It was unclear whether the gunman had a bomb, but officers approached him cautiously, pulling the gunman’s child to safety.
The boy’s grandmother, Wali Carranza, suggested over the weekend that Samuel was recently taken off a ventilator and is now breathing on his own, but remains in critical condition.
Tom George Thomas, 57, a church volunteer who was shot in the hip during the incident, was released from the hospital in stable condition the day after the shooting.
Blaze News previously noted that Genes Moreno had multiple run-ins with the law before the Lakewood church shooting. She was charged with drug possession, assault, unlawful possession of a weapon, resisting arrest and forgery.
Houston homicide commander Christopher Hassig said the gender-bending shooter was also briefly detained in 2016 for mental health issues, suggesting he had a history of mental illness.
According to Genes Moreno’s former mother-in-law, Rabbi Wali Carranza, the gunman was a schizophrenic diagnosed with Munchausen by proxy. Moreno was the subject of multiple Child Protective Services investigations after allegedly harming her own children multiple times.
Genes Moreno also lost custody of her children at one point, but appears to have regained it in 2022.
Police suggested early in the investigation that they had discovered some of the gunman’s “anti-Semitic writings.” Neighbors described repeated threats, Nazi salutes and, in one instance, the gunman drawing a swastika on a nearby resident’s fence.
Carranza
Said The New York Times reported that Genes Moreno, a Muslim, frequently targeted her Jewish in-laws and used “extremely blasphemous and horrifying” abuse.
Police have not yet confirmed the motive for the attack.
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