SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas — Workers on Monday demolished a Texas church where a gunman killed more than 20 worshippers in 2017. Workers used heavy machinery to demolish the small structure despite efforts by some family members to preserve the scene of the deadliest church shooting in U.S. history.
A judge last month gave First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs permission to demolish its chapel at the site of the attack, which had previously been preserved as a memorial. Church members voted for the demolition in 2021, but some families in the community of fewer than 1,000 people have filed a lawsuit, hoping for a new vote on the building’s fate.
Authorities say 26 people, including a pregnant woman and an unborn child, were killed in the shooting on November 5, 2017. After the shooting, the interior of the chapel was painted white and chairs with the names of the victims were placed on them. About a year and a half after the shooting, a new church was completed for the congregation.
John Reilly, an 86-year-old member of the church, watched in sadness and dismay as the long arm of the yellow excavator slammed its heavy claws into the building again and again.
“The devil had his way,” Riley said, “and without that church, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”
He said he would pray to God to “punish” those who initiated the sabotage.
“It’s God’s house, not their house,” Riley said.
For many in the community, the sanctuary was a place of solace.
Terry Smith, president of the Sutherland Springs Community Association, said she has been a frequent visitor there for years and called it “a place where I can feel solace in all the people who died there.” Among those killed in the shooting was a woman like Smith’s daughter, Joan Ward, and her two daughters, ages 7 and 5.
Smith watched as the memorial sanctuary was demolished on Monday.
“I’m sad, angry and hurt,” she said.
In early July, a Texas judge granted a temporary restraining order sought by some of the families. But then another judge denied a request to extend that order, and the demolition began. In court papers, lawyers for the church called the building a “constant and deeply painful reminder.”
Lawyers for the church argued it was the church’s right to destroy the monument, but lawyers for the families who filed the lawsuit said they were simply hoping for a new vote.
“This is a very sad day for us,” said Amber Holder, a church member who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
She said she wasn’t at the service on the day of the shooting but arrived shortly afterward. As a teenager, she was taken in by the pastor’s family, whose 14-year-old daughter, Annabelle Pomeroy, was also one of the victims.
Holder said the church has become a part of history and the scars on the building that day, including bullet holes, are a powerful reminder of what happened.
“There’s no benefit to destroying it,” Holder said.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege that some church members were wrongfully removed from the church’s rolls before the vote took place. In court filings, the church denied the allegations in the lawsuit.
A woman who answered the phone at the church said they had no comment Monday and hung up.
The church shooter, Devin Patrick Kelly, was chased by passersby before crashing his car and fatally shooting himself. Investigators have said the shooting appears to have been the result of a domestic dispute between Kelly and his mother-in-law, who occasionally attended church services but was not there on the day of the shooting.
Communities across the U.S. are grappling with the question of what to do with the sites of mass shootings. Last month, demolition began on the three-story building where 17 people were killed in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. After the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, the building was demolished and a new one built.
Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, New York, and Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the site of a racially motivated mass shooting, have both reopened. In Colorado, the library at Columbine High School, where most of the victims died, has been rebuilt but still stands.
In Texas, officials plan to close Robb Elementary School in Uvalde and demolish the school following a 2022 shooting.
