The church where the deadly Texas shooting occurred last weekend may be demolished. Frank Pomeroy, pastor of First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, reportedly told Southern Baptist Convention leaders that holding services at the church would be too difficult following the massacre.
“The pastor expressed his desire that perhaps the best way forward is to have the church demolished and replaced with a prayer garden,” Roger Oldham, convention spokesman, told USA Today.
Oldham noted members of the congregations haven’t “had a chance to fully deal with the grief and then come together to make a decision” and that Pomeroy would like to build a new church on site.
Pomeroy said the congregation was not receptive to repairing the small, white clapboard church.
“There’s too many that do not want to go back in there,” he told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday. “We will probably turn it into a memorial for a while. We’re playing it day by day right now.”
Law enforcement identified Devin Patrick Kelley as the gunman who opened fire on church-goers at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs on Sunday, killing 26 and wounding 20. Investigators believe Kelley shot and killed himself after the shooting.
Kelley had served in the Air Force from 2010 to 2014 but was court-martialed for assaulting his wife and stepson in 2012. As a result, he received a bad conduct discharge and spent one year in prison, and due to a bureaucratic error neither his arrest nor conviction were listed in the national background check database, which should have prevented him from buying the gun used in the shooting.
