Community has been left reeling after massacre at First Baptist Church in Texas in which at least 26 worshippers died

The massacre in Las Vegas struck at the core of one of the world’s busiest and most famous cities. In contrast, this was horror at the heart of smalltown America: at least 26 worshippers shot dead in a modest church in a hitherto anonymous little community, population a couple of hundred, about 35 miles (56km) east of San Antonio.

What was it like here before Sunday’s massacre during a morning service at the First Baptist Church?



“Peaceful,” said Julian Rangel, a 24-year-old from San Antonio with family in the area, as he stood at the edge of a police cordon about 50 metres from the church.

“A small town that’s supposed to be so peaceful,” said his grandmother, Virginia, who used to own land close by. Sutherland Springs is so small, and First Baptist so central, that everything in the town is close to the church.

At a food pantry on Saturday Virginia had met a pastor from a church in San Antonio that has a police officer stationed at the entrance during services. She had had trouble comprehending why such a measure might be necessary. “Isn’t that sad? You have to have police at the front of the church with a gun,” she recalled saying.



Now, as she gazed at a scene swarming with law enforcement agencies, the precaution was easier to understand.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Law enforcement officials at the First Baptist Church. Photograph: Networ/Sipa USA/Rex/Shutterstock

Texas has permissive gun laws that were recently loosened by its Republican-dominated legislature. A rule that came into effect on 1 September made it easier for churches to arm their congregations. The state also generally allows open and concealed carrying of weapons.

“Two members of my church have guns, they carry guns but nobody knows. They carry them just in case,” Virginia Rangel added. “Everything’s changing for the worse.”

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A four-lane highway makes it easy for travellers heading towards the coast from San Antonio to rush straight through Sutherland Springs without giving the place – which had its tourist heyday more than a hundred years ago – a second thought. But local people like to say that everybody knows everybody. The common big-city gesture of defiance in the face of mass murder – to carry on as normal, to refuse to be defined by calamity – is simply impossible somewhere this tiny, given the impact of the shooting relative to the size of the community.

Sutherland Springs has a post office, two gas stations, a community centre, a recently opened Dollar General store and single-storey, trailer-like homes. Farther out, farms and ranches – and small churches – are dotted amid gently rolling countryside less scarred by the fracking boom than the landscape just a few miles to the south. Even a road sign on the First Baptist church’s street refers to it as a “farm road”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Police block a road in Sutherland Springs,. Photograph: Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP/Getty Images

Two men who live nearby, Ramiro Martinez, 39, and Ray Munoz, 37, set up a portable loudspeaker on a patch of grass next to the post office that pumped Christian pop music in the direction of the church. It was a form of warm-up for the candlelight vigil that took place on the same spot later in the evening. “The devil’s attacking, wants people not to go to church,” Martinez said. “It’s a good town.”

They were cautious about attributing the tragedy to America’s gun laws. “It’s hard to say,” said Munoz. “It’s just evil out in the world. It’s always going to be around, whether it’s a gun, knife or truck or whatever.”

Mario Cavazos lives a block or so from the church. It is not unusual to hear the occasional gunshot, he said, when hunters are roaming the nearby countryside. But this was very different: rapid fire, “one right after the other, right after the other,” he said. “Probably like 15 rounds and it stopped and went again. I went over there, to the shooting, I went to see what was going on.”

Cavazos, 53, saw a man dressed all in black leaving the church, “walking like a normal person, he had his head down and that’s about it”. Later, Cavazos realised it must have been the shooter.

“Everything happened quick,” said Michael Ward, who rushed to help several people, “carrying them out, the ones that were alive.” On Sunday night he came to the vigil as he waited to hear the fates of several injured relatives; one of his nieces, he said, was dead.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Douglas Stowe: ‘I’m numb right now.’ Photograph: Tom Dart

When the firing started on Sunday morning, Douglas Stowe, 67, knew what the sound was. He served in Vietnam, an experience that left him with post-traumatic stress disorder, he said. His workshop is about 100 metres from the church.

A scratch on his old Dodge SUV might have saved his life. Stowe is an occasional churchgoer and considered attending Sunday’s service. “I got tied up working on my car,” he said. “I got a scratch on it and was sanding it out.”

“I don’t think anybody ought to have automatic weapons,” he added.

That mass murder should visit his quiet town amid a broader context of natural disasters, other shootings and terrorist acts, gave Stowe a sense of dread about where America society is heading. “In this day and time, man, you need a gun. You need to pack a gun to protect yourself,” he said.

In the gloaming of Sunday evening, Stowe grew animated and moved his hands as he talked. “I’m numb right now,” he said. “Looks like we’re going to be going to quite a few funerals.”