Judge says Air Force is largely to blame for deadly 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooting
The judge said the Air Force bears 60% of the responsibility for the attack at the First Baptist Church
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A federal judge has ruled that the US Air Force is largely responsible for a 2017 mass shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas after failing to add the shooter’s criminal history to a federal background check database for gun purchases.
US District Judge Xavier Rodriguez of the Western District of Texas delivered the decision on Wednesday in a civil lawsuit launched by survivors and family members of victims of the deadly shooting at the First Baptist Church, as The Wall Street Journal reported.
Twenty-six-year-old shooter Devin Kelley, a former airman, fatally shot 25 people, including a pregnant woman, on 12 November 2017, before killing himself shortly after the attack, which remains Texas’ deadliest mass shooting.
Authorities put the official death toll at 26 due to a pregnant person being among those killed.
In his decision, Judge Rodriguez said the Air Force should bear 60 per cent of the responsibility for the shooting.
“The trial conclusively established that no other individual – not even Kelley’s own parents or partners – knew as much as the United States about the violence that Devin Kelley had threatened to commit and was capable of committing,” the judge wrote in his decision, according to The WSJ.
“Moreover, the evidence shows that – had the Government done its job and properly reported Kelleys information into the background check system – it is more likely than not Kelley would have been deterred from carrying out the Church shooting,” he said.
The judge called for a trial plan to be set within 15 days for monetary damages to be determined for survivors and victims’ families.
Kelley should have been blocked from legally buying a gun due to a past conviction in a 2012 general court-martial on two counts of domestic assault on his wife and stepson that saw him sentenced to a year in military jail.
According to The Associated Press, the stepson was left with a cracked skull following the incident.
However, because the Air Force failed to log his conviction on the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, he was able to purchase the rifle that he used in the deadly shooting.