The tragic shooting at Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston has brought to light the urgent pleas of a concerned family member that went unheeded for years. Walli Carranza, the former mother-in-law of the shooter, Genesse Moreno, repeatedly warned authorities and the church of Moreno's deteriorating mental health, as she shared with KSAT on Wednesday.
Despite Carranza's efforts, which included alerting Child Protective Services after Moreno allegedly medicated her infant son inappropriately and notifying law enforcement of unattended guns in Moreno's home, no substantive action was taken. Carranza's worst fears realized when Moreno stormed into the church, with her son in tow, opened fire, and injured two, before being fatally shot by security officers, one of the wounded, was Moreno's own 7-year-old son, struck in the head.
In an interview with Yahoo News, Carranza recounted the harrowing details of her grandson Samuel's critical condition. She emphasized, “You can’t put responsibility on the mind, when the mind was so very ill. A healthy mother would never bring her child to a situation like this. That’s not mental health. So sometimes we don’t have to find a guilty party or place blame. We can just say there are systems that failed.”
Lakewood Church spokesman Don Iloff stated that the church did not have records of the emails from Carranza's attorney, seeking assistance for Moreno, but were still searching. Ill-defined were the circumstances leading Moreno to purchase the AR-style rifle used in the attack and the absence of intervention from Texas's nonexistent "red flag" laws, which would permit gun seizure from individuals deemed dangerous. In the wake of the violence, Osteen has called for a special service of "healing and restoration," underscoring that, “We are not people of fear. We are people of faith.”
The shooter's criminal history, replete with misdemeanors, did not prompt a firearm possession ban under Texas law, and federally, the bar is set higher still: only certain domestic violence misdemeanors and felonies after release from prison trigger such restrictions. In her tireless fight for her grandson's well-being and safety, Carranza told Yahoo News, she met for hours with FBI agents, discussing the reports she filed over the years about Moreno.
