Bizarre shooting at Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church

 

Mugshots of the suspect in the attack, Genesse Moreno AKA Jeffrey Escalante. KHOU 11.

A bizarre shooting occurred at Televangelist Joel Osteen's Lakewood church in Houston Texas that left the attacker dead and two people injured, including the attackers 7 year old son. KHOU 11. The attacker, a woman known as Genesse Moreno, but who also went by the name of Jeffrey Escalante, was armed with an AR-15 that had "Free Palestine" written on it. She open fired and injured a man in the leg before being engaged by off duty police officers that were working as security for the megachurch. Moreno was killed by one of the officer but her 7 year old son was shot in the head during the firefight and is not expected to survive. Moreno was involved with a contentious divorce with her Jewish ex-husband and anti-Semitic  writing by Moreno was found by the police. Moreno has a long criminal and mental health history and it is unclear where she was able to purchase her AR-15 and the .22 caliber rifle she was armed with. 

My Comment:

This is a bizarre incident that seems to hit on every large social political issue that is in the news right now. The attacker went by a male name as an alias, though cops claim she was not transgender. She was a Hispanic immigrant who might be in the country illegally. She managed to get her rifle despite a long criminal and mental health history. And she appears to have been motivated in part by anti-Semitism. If you could have designed a more controversial incident I don't know how. 

If there is something we can agree on though, it's the fact that having armed security at this church probably saved a lot of lives. The off-duty police managed to shoot and kill this attacker before she managed to kill anyone. If those cops weren't there who knows how many people would have been killed?

However, there might be room for criticism in this case as well. We don't know how the 7 year old boy that was shot was injured. It's possible that the attacker was the one that shot him, but it's also possible that he was killed in the crossfire. If so that's a horrible thing but one that I wouldn't wish on anyone. Shooting the attacker was the right thing to do, even if someone got caught in the cross fire. 

A real question is why on earth this woman would bring her child to a mass shooting? I don't think I have ever seen that before and it makes me wonder if she did bring the child there just to shoot him? She was involved in a custody battle and it might have been a "if I can't have him no one can" style incident. But if not, it makes zero sense for a mother to bring her child to a mass shooting. 

The suspects gender is in question as well. The police say she never identified as anything but a female but also went by a very male name. There are only a couple of reasons for doing that, the more obvious one being that she was actually transgender or some other member of the LGBT alphabet soup. But I think it's more likely a false identity she used because she was an immigrant, possibly an illegal one. 

The real question is motivation. Was this a simple mass shooting or was it a terror attack? The presence of anti-Semitic writing and "Free Palestine" on her rifle obviously implies that this was politically motivated. But the fact that she was in a custody dispute with her Jewish ex and her Rabbi ex-Mother-in-law I am guessing the motivation was more personal. 

Of course, in either case, why did she attack Joel Osteen's mega church? Supposedly she had some link to the church but if she was motivated by personal hatred of her ex, why not attack him and his family? If she was motivated by anti-Semitism, why did she attack a church and not a synagogue? It just seemed like she was attacking people that had nothing to do with her anger. 

Regardless, this was a very strange case. A female mass shooting is pretty rare in the first place, but this one was even weirder. The facts of the case as we know them now just raise further questions. And like I said, it seemed to involve just about every hot-button social issue that is raging in the country right now.