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Lakewood Church member on the recent megachurch shooting: A ‘sad occasion’
Longtime Lakewood Church member Rhonda Jenkins joins ‘Fox News at Night’ with reaction to the recent shooting at the Houston megachurch.
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The former mother-in-law of the Lakewood Church shooter spoke out in a new interview, saying the attack was “predictable and preventable.”
Houston police identified the shooter as Genesse Ivonne Moreno, 36, who they say wore a trench coat and carried a backpack Sunday upon entering pastor Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church. Moreno, who used both male and female aliases but most recently identified as female, according to police, also brought a 7-year-old boy into the church before opening fire.
The boy, said to be Moreno’s son, was shot in the head and remains hospitalized in critical condition, while Moreno was killed by armed guards at the church.
In an interview that aired on ABC News Tuesday, Walli Carranza, who describes herself as a rabbi on Facebook and is the suspect’s former mother-in-law, said, “this was predictable and preventable, and the only reason to be able to predict something is to prevent it and take a preeminent strike against it.”
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Genesse Ivonne Moreno, who Houston Police said opened fire at the Lakewood Church, used several male and female aliases, including Jeffrey Escalante Moreno. She also had six pervious arrests dating back to 2005. (Texas Department of Public Safety / Kirk Sides/Houston Chronicle via AP)
“And that pre-eminent strike shouldn’t have to always be in the courts. It should be healing. And that’s what we sought. We did family meeting with she and her mother to try and find this, find the place of healing, find the place of moving forward for the sake of the child,” Carranza said.
“I did reach out at one point to Joel Osteen’s church asking for help for the mother and for intervention. As I would expect anybody to reach out to me if one of my congregants was in a situation that needed my intervention. And that’s what I needed from him. I needed their team – and I don’t know what they did – I don’t know if they were able to.”
Authorities said Moreno had a history of mental illness, including being placed under emergency detention in 2016, but provided no additional details.
“I think the tremendous guilt that any grandparent or parent feels when they haven’t been able to protect a child from something so horrific has to be set aside when you’re in the room with the child so that all they feel is the hopefulness, and the moving forward. That we’re going to live life going out the front window, not in the rearview mirror,” Carranza added.
Carranza, said to be the boy’s paternal grandmother, was involved in a bitter divorce and child custody battle between her son, Quito, and Moreno that extended to two Texas counties.
In court documents filed in Montgomery County, Carranza claimed that Moreno and her mother “knowingly and intentionally harmed” the child by “lying” to authorities for reasons hard to understand “even by the pastoral staff of Joel Osteen’s church,” according to Click2Houston. Carranza indicated she sought advice from pastoral staff at Lakewood, where Moreno’s mother was a congregation member, to “understand what caused the women’s behavior,” but court documents do not indicate which staff members Carranza claimed to have contacted.
In a rambling 2022 application for a protective order against Carranza that Moreno wrote without help from an attorney, Moreno complained of being threatened and followed and claimed to have received text messages from FBI Director Christopher Wray, according to The Associated Press.
From left to right, Lakewood Church pastor Joel Osteen, Police Chief Troy Finner, Fire Department Chief Samuel Pena, and Mayor John Whitmire participate in a press conference during an active shooter event at Lakewood Church on Sunday, Feb. 11, 2024. (Kirk Sides/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
In a separate court filing seeking to be named conservator of Moreno’s son, the ex-mother-in-law alleged that Moreno was mentally ill and that the child was being neglected and abused. Carranza claimed Moreno had schizophrenia and did not always take her prescribed medication.
Moreno’s ex-husband told a Harris County judge in 2021 that Moreno would “physically attack” him and “on multiple occasions, chased [him] out of the house with knives,” according to Click2Houston. He also told the judge that Moreno did not tell him that their child was born until a month after the birth and apparently “told the hospital that [he] was dead.”
The ex-husband was granted custody in Harris County, but a new trial in Montgomery County had the opposite outcome after a change of venue request.
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Police searched Moreno’s residence in Conroe, a city more than 50 miles north of the church, where authorities say antisemitic writings were found. The weapon used in the attack had a “Palestine” sticker, according to authorities.
In a statement shared online after the shooting, Carranza said, “[A]lthough my former daughter-in-law raged against Israel and Jews in a pro-Palestinian rant yesterday this has nothing to do with Judaism or Islam. Nothing! But this is what happens when reckless and irresponsible reporting let’s people with severe mental illness have an excuse for violence.”
“No one may ever blame a police officer who carries out his or her rightful duty to save lives even if they are found responsible for shooting my grandson. The fault lies in a child protective services of Montgomery County and Harris County that refused to remove custody from a woman with known mental illness that was not being treated and with the state of Texas for not having strong red flag laws that would have prevented her from owning or possessing a gun,” the grandmother added.
Houston police officers watch over displaced churchgoers outside Lakewood Church on Sunday following the shooting. (Karen Warren/Houston Chronicle via AP)
Five neighbors who lived near Moreno in the small, two-street community in Conroe told FOX 26 Houston they have been through years of “hell,” while trying to sound the alarm to police and local officials about her conduct. They said Moreno displayed swastikas and gang symbols on the side of her home, at one point allegedly pointed a rifle at her next door neighbor’s grandchildren, pulled a gun on another neighbor, blasted threatening music and sometimes sped past and swerved toward neighbors accompanying their grandchildren to the park.
The women claimed Moreno also filed false police reports claiming that they were stalking her and her son, when really Moreno had baby monitors on her fence and was the one who followed and recorded them while they were outside. They also claimed Moreno would regularly carry a long rifle and gun cases in and out of her house as a form of intimidation.
Despite this, they say local law enforcement and officials refused to take meaningful action in response to their frequent reports.
Records in Harris County, where Houston is located, showed that Moreno, under the names Jeffery Escalante-Moreno or Jeffery Escalante, was charged in six criminal cases from 2005 to 2011. The allegations included forging a $100 bill, stealing socks, hats and makeup, and assaulting a detention officer.
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The August 2009 assault conviction sent Moreno to jail for 180 days.
Lakewood is regularly attended by 45,000 people weekly, making it the third-largest megachurch in the U.S., according to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Danielle Wallace is a reporter for Fox News Digital covering politics, crime, police and more. Story tips can be sent to [email protected] and on Twitter: @danimwallace.