SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas (AP) 鈥� Crews on Monday began to tear down a Texas church where a gunman , using heavy machinery to raze the small building even after some families sought to preserve the scene of .
last month for the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs to tear down the sanctuary where the attack took place, which until now had been kept as a memorial. That ruling came after some families in the community of less than 1,000 people filed a lawsuit Church members voted in 2021 to tear it down.
Authorities put the number of dead in the Nov. 5, 2017, shooting at 26 people, including a pregnant woman and her unborn baby. After the shooting, the interior of the sanctuary was painted white and chairs with the names of those who were killed were placed there. was completed for the congregation about a year and a half after the shooting.
John Riley, an 86-year-old member of the church, watched with sadness and disappointment as the long arm of a yellow excavator swung a heavy claw into the building over and over.
鈥淭he devil got his way,鈥� Riley said, 鈥淚 would not be the man I am without that church.鈥�
He said he would pray for God to 鈥減unish the ones鈥� who put the demolition in motion.
鈥淭hat was God鈥檚 house, not their house,鈥� Riley said.
For many in the community, the sanctuary was a place of solace.
Terrie Smith, president of the Sutherland Springs Community Association, visited often over the years, calling it a place where 鈥測ou feel the comfort of everybody that was lost there.鈥� Among those killed in the shooting were a woman who was like a daughter to Smith 鈥� .
Smith watched Monday as the memorial sanctuary was torn down.
鈥淚 am sad, angry, hurt,鈥� she said.
In early July, sought by some families. But another judge later denied a request to extend that order, setting in motion the demolition. In court filings, attorneys for the church called the structure a 鈥渃onstant and very painful reminder."
Attorneys for the church argued that it was within its rights to demolish the memorial while the attorney for the families who filed the lawsuit said they were just hoping to get a new vote.
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs alleged that some church members were wrongfully removed from the church roster before the vote was taken. In a court filing, the church denied the allegations in the lawsuit.
A woman who answered the phone at the church said Monday that she had no comment then hung up.
The man who opened fire in the church, Devin Patrick Kelley, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after he was chased by bystanders and crashed his car. Investigators have said the shooting appeared to stem from a domestic dispute involving Kelley and his mother-in-law, who sometimes attended services at the church but was not present on the day of the shooting.
Communities across the U.S. have to the sites of mass shootings. on the three-story building where died in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. After the 2012 shooting at in Connecticut, it was torn down and replaced.
in Buffalo, New York, and the in Charleston, 麻豆传媒AV Carolina, where racist mass shootings happened, both reopened. In Colorado, still stands, though its library, where most of the victims were killed, was replaced.
In Texas, officials closed in Uvalde after the 2022 shooting there and plan to demolish the school.
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Stengle reported from Dallas.
Eric Gay And Jamie Stengle, The Associated Press
