.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4HEchh0XD8
Interview also with the heroic driver, Johnnie Langendorff, who with Willeford pursued the fleeing Kelley. (Langendorff is, of course, a German name; probably Willeford is also German. That area is the German belt near Austin.)
.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9xyY0wbcKo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9xyY0wbcKo
The Sutherland Springs, Texas, resident who exchanged gunfire with the suspect in Sunday’s mass shooting at a church insists he is not a hero, saying that he was “scared to death” during the encounter.
“I think my God, my Lord protected me and gave me the skills to do what needed to be done,” Stephen Willeford, a former National Rifle Association instructor, tells KHBS/KHOG television in Arkansas.
Willeford says his daughter alerted him to what sounded like shots being fired at the nearby First Baptist Church. That is when, he said, he got his rifle out of his safe.
“I kept hearing the shots, one after another, very rapid shots ” just ‘pop pop pop pop’ and I knew every one of those shots represented someone, that it was aimed at someone, that they weren’t just random shots,” Willeford said.
“I was scared to death, I was,” a visibly shaken Willeford told the television station. “I was scared for me. I was scared for every one of them and I was scared for my own family that lived less than a block away.”
Willeford said he loaded a magazine in his rifle and ran across the street without even taking the time to put on his shoes.
When he saw the suspect, identified by police as Devin Patrick Kelley, the two exchanged gunfire.
“He saw me and I saw him,” Willeford said. “I was standing behind a pickup truck for cover.”
“I know I hit him,” Willeford said. “He got into his vehicle, and he fired another couple rounds through his side window. When the window dropped, I fired another round at him again.”
Kelley was reportedly wearing tactical gear and wielding a variant of the AR-15 rifle.
When the gunman sped away, Willeford saw a pickup truck and quickly explained the situation to the driver, later identified as Johnnie Langendorff, and the two set off on a high-speed chase to run down the attacker.
Langendorff told KSAT that Willeford “came to my vehicle in distress with his weapon” and said ” ‘we need to pursue him. He just shot up the church.’ ”
Langendorff said he and the other man pursued the shooter at high speed before Kelley appeared to lose control and go off the road. “The other gentleman jumped out and had his rifle on him and he didn’t move after that,” Langendorff told the TV station.
Kelley’s vehicle, a truck, hit a road sign and flipped before landing in a ditch, KHBS/KHOG says. Willeford says he put his rifle on the top of the truck and yelled to the suspect: “Get out of the truck, get out of the truck” but never saw any movement until law enforcement arrived a few minutes later.
Freeman Martin, regional director of the state’s Department of Public Safety, said the cause of Kelley’s death had not been determined. “However, investigators found evidence at the scene that indicates the subject may have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
……Were Willeford and Langendorff heroes?
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/453504/yes-texas-hero-did-stop-mass-shooting
The massacre was already finished, they say. “He may have helped apprehend the shooter, but he didn’t stop him.”
There are two responses to this. First, even if the shooter was “finished” at the First Baptist Church, it’s quite a feat to divine that he was somehow “finished” committing murder. He was still armed and very, very dangerous.
Willeford did indeed stop him. We can’t know if the shooter’s crimes were complete.
The second response relies on an eyewitness account that says Willeford actually interrupted the shooting. Here’s an excerpt of a powerful piece in the Washington Post. According to a wounded woman named Farida Brown, the shooter “paced back and forth, firing into the pews and shooting at cellphones.”
Brown knew her time had come: The gunman fired four shots into the torso of the woman on Farida Brown’s left, David Brown said.
“With every shot, she was crying,” he said of the woman. “She was just staring at my mom while she tried to comfort her.” As he fired rounds into the woman, Farida Brown held her hand, telling her she was heading to heaven. Up to that point, Farida Brown had sustained only shots to her legs. But as the shooter fired into the woman next to her, she prepared to be slain. “Then she thought that it was her turn,” David Brown told the Post. “She just started praying.”
But then, help arrived: At that moment, she heard a shot fired from a different man, at the front door. The other man was Stephen Willeford, who lives near the church. Willeford, a certified shooting instructor, grabbed his own rifle and raced out of his house barefoot.
Willeford modestly says that he’s not a hero. But he most certainly is.
When the government failed ” it failed to enforce its own laws [the dishonorably discharged Air Force vet had no right to own guns, but was able somehow to buy them anyway], and its law enforcement officers couldn’t arrive in time to stop the slaughter ” a private citizen stepped up.
He risked his life to save those he could.
Then he risked his life again to chase down a murderer on the run.
So, yes, he did stop the Texas church massacre. We owe him our unreserved, unqualified thanks.
Link to some photos of the savage monster- Devin Patrick Kelley:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5053013/Devin-Kelley-outcast-preached-atheism.html
Please take note. In high school he combed his hair down over his eyes like a seductress and wore a strand of pearls around his neck. This beast didn’t worship Dylan Roof. He worshiped Dylan Klebold.