The 26-year-old gunman who killed more than two dozen people in a Sutherland Springs, Texas, church on Sunday once escaped from a psychiatric hospital and attempted to carry out death threats against his superiors in the military, The New York Times reports.
In 2012, Devin Patrick Kelley escaped Peak Behavioral Health Services in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, and was caught by police at a nearby bus station in El Paso, where he was apparently attempting to get away. Kelley had been sent to the psychiatric facility after breaking his infant stepson's skull and assaulting his wife, charges he pleaded guilty to and which led to his eventual discharge from the Air Force.
An El Paso police report claims the person who reported Kelley missing said he "suffered from mental disorders," that he was "attempting to carry out death threats [against] his military chain of command," and that he was "a danger to himself and others as he had already been caught sneaking firearms onto Holloman Air Force Base," Houston's KPRC reports.
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The Air Force did not enter into a national database the 2012 domestic violence court-martial, which would have prohibited Kelley from purchasing weapons, the Air Force announced Monday.
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