The Air Force was actually held accountable by a federal judge. Xavier Rodriguez ordered them to fork over more than $230 million to survivors of the 2017 First Baptist Church massacre, which happened in Texas.
Air Force failed the public
Because the United States Air Force failed to disclose critical information to the FBI which could have prevented a bloody massacre, the judge says that they’re “60% liable” for the vicious attack which left more than two dozen dead, including an unborn fetus.
What that means in the long run is that the survivors and families of the victims will share $230 million in damages.
If a flag had been raised on Devin Patrick Kelley by the Air Force, it wouldn’t have been so easy for him to get his hands on a weapon.
Instead of sauntering into a gun shop, he would have had to buy one illegally on the street, like other common criminals. He had assault conviction data which never got fed into the database.
On Monday, February 7, U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez ruled that “the Air Force did not provide the information about Kelley as required.” If they had, the former airman might not have “opened fire during a Sunday service at First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs.”
Kelley saved the last bullet for himself, dying “of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound after being shot and chased by two men who heard the gunfire at the church.”
Court martial for assault
While Kelley served in the Air Force he racked up quite a record, pleading guilty “to multiple specifications of assault, including striking his wife, choking her with his hands and kicking her.”
He liked to beat up his boy too, “convicted of striking his stepson on the head and body ‘with a force likely to produce death or grievous bodily harm.‘”
In 2012, before he was convicted on those assault charges, “Kelley briefly escaped from a mental health center in New Mexico and got in trouble for bringing guns onto a military base and threatening his superiors there.” The Air Force never bothered to tell anyone else about that.
When cops were called to his home on rape charges in 2013, he was “investigated for three months.” Comal County Sheriff Mark Reynolds observes that they simply “stopped investigating after they believed Kelley left Texas and moved to Colorado.”
The Pentagon requires all “information about convictions of military personnel in crimes like assault” get reported to the “FBI’s Criminal Justice Investigation Services Division for inclusion in the National Criminal Information Center database.”
They’re only interested in finding ways to frame Donald Trump for colluding with Russia so the Air Force didn’t bother them with “the information about Kelley as required.“
