Texas church shooter Devin Kelley reportedly had a penchant for killing animals and once told a former Air Force staff sergeant that he admired Dylann Roof, the man who murdered nine people at a Charleston church in 2015.
Kelley purportedly told Jessika Edwards, whom he served with at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico from 2010 until 2012, that he wished he had the nerve to commit such a crime.
“He would say ‘isn’t it cool? Did you watch the news?’ He would say he wished he had the nerve to do it, but all he would be able to do is kill animals,” Edwards told CNN this week.
Edwards said that strange communications between the two unfolded on Facebook back in 2014 — years before Kelley murdered 26 people inside First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, this past Sunday — and that she decided to cease communication amid his bizarre rantings.
But Kelley’s strange and problematic behavior reportedly started well before those exchanges, as Edwards said that he was always in trouble and would “make jokes about wanting to kill somebody” while they served together. She said she and others would say “that’s not funny.”
At one point, Edwards told her bosses to back off of disciplining Kelley for fear that he “would shoot the place up,” she told CNN.
A disturbing picture of Kelley has emerged in the wake of the shooting, with domestic abuse issues, claims that he punched a dog and other accusations that show a person with a litany of problems.
The Air Force confirmed that Edwards was on base when Kelley was, but did not confirm whether the two worked together, as she said in her interview.
(H/T: CNN)