Texas Authorities Unable To Access Information On Gunman's Phone

Investigators in Texas are still trying to piece together information about Sunday's deadly church shooting. Officials have the gunman's phone but can't access the information inside it.

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

The gunman who carried out Sunday's massacre at a Texas church was in a mental health facility in 2012. He then escaped from Peak Behavioral Health Services in New Mexico and was caught. This was all just months before his Air Force trial began on charges that he assaulted his stepson and his wife. A U.S. official tells NPR that Devin Kelley was ordered to pretrial confinement by his Air Force commander.

NPR's Nathan Rott is in Wilson County, Texas, where the shooting took place, and he's with us now. Hi, Nate.

NATHAN ROTT, BYLINE: Hey, Kelly.

MCEVERS: So just tell us more about these new details that we're learning about Devin Kelley's time at this mental health facility.

ROTT: Well, so this new information is coming from an old police report that was obtained by NPR. It says that Devin Kelley, the now-deceased gunman, escaped from a mental health facility in 2012, and he was put there after he was caught attempting to sneak weapons onto the Air Force base that he was stationed at with the intent of carrying out death threats that he had made against his military chain of command.

The report says that Kelley suffered from mental disorders and was a danger to himself and others. This was around the same time that the gunman pleaded guilty in a military court to physically assaulting his wife and infant child. And one of those attacks left the toddler with a fractured skull.

MCEVERS: So now we know there's an established pattern of violence that followed this individual.

ROTT: Yeah.

MCEVERS: Have investigators commented on that?

ROTT: You know, the FBI said earlier today that Kelley was not in their database. His name never made it to them. But it is very clear that there is an established pattern here.

MCEVERS: And I think the question everyone has is, how was he able to purchase the weapons he used in the shooting on Sunday? I understand he purchased multiple weapons since being discharged from the military.

ROTT: Yeah. So the ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, says that Kelley purchased four guns in the last four years. And he should not have been able to purchase them, at least from a licensed dealer. Obviously he could have bought them at a private sale from a gun show, someplace where they're not required to do a background check.

But that said, there are 11 criteria under federal law that it's intended to prevent a person from being able to purchase a firearm. And it's possible that Kelley would have been - he would have fallen under two of those criteria having being sentenced to a year in a military prison and for his documented history of domestic abuse.

We do know that the Air Force did not enter that history of domestic abuse into the National Criminal Information Center database, which should have stopped those gun purchases. They admitted that error and say they're rectifying it. It's not clear, though, if the weapons that he purchased in that time - the ones we're talking about - were the ones that he used in the horrific shooting on Sunday which left 26 people dead, including a mother and her unborn child.

MCEVERS: Have you found out anything more about the attack and what motivated it?

ROTT: You know, authorities are being pretty guarded here. They didn't give us a whole lot of new information today. They said they did not want to delve into any - any further into the motive. They said they have reason to believe - they have no reason to believe, I should say, that religious ideology or belief played into the attack. That's something that had been speculated about. And they reiterated that this may have stemmed from a domestic issue.

The gunman's mother-in-law attended the church that this attack happened at, but she was not at the service on Sunday. Authorities have said that Kelley was at odds with her and had sent her threatening text messages, though we don't know when. And it's possible that some of that, though, could come to light in the coming days and weeks.

MCEVERS: How so?

ROTT: Well, so they're going to continue investigating this obviously. They're interviewing the mother-in-law and some of the other family members. But perhaps more importantly, local law enforcement say they recovered the gunman's cellphone, and they've handed it to the FBI. There is a complication, though. Apparently the phone is locked, and they cannot access it.

This is similar to what happened during the San Bernardino shooting where the FBI couldn't access a shooter's iPhones. The FBI here is not saying what type of phone it is. They are saying, though, that they are working with teams that should be able to crack that lock and hopefully access the information on it.

MCEVERS: NPR's Nathan Rott in Wilson County, Texas, thank you.

ROTT: Thank you.

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