For mentally ill 'transgender' Houston megachurch shooter, obtaining guns wasn't an issue

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/houston-megachurch-shooter-obtaining-
guns-wasnt-issue-rcna138819

CONROE, Texas — Amid a documented history of criminal activity and mental
health struggles, the woman who opened fire at Joel Osteen’s Houston
megachurch with her son in tow appeared to have no difficulties in one
area: buying guns.

In the attack Sunday, Genesse Moreno used an AR-15-style rifle that was
purchased legally in December, officials said. She was also armed with a
.22-caliber rifle. But court records suggest Moreno, 36, had owned at
least four other firearms that had been confiscated over the past four
years.

Two weapons were taken in separate incidents in Colorado and Texas,
according to Moreno’s ex-mother-in-law, and two more were seized and
destroyed after an arrest in 2022 outside Houston, prosecutors said. Her
gun ownership was also detailed by her neighbors in the Houston suburb of
Conroe, who claimed she harassed and threatened them over the years.

How exactly Moreno, 36, obtained the rifles she had Sunday and why she
targeted the celebrity pastor’s Lakewood Church remain under
investigation. She was killed in an exchange of gunfire with two off-duty
law enforcement officers, while her 7-year-old son and a man were injured,
Houston police said.

The man was released from the hospital with a leg injury, investigators
said.

Moreno’s ex-mother-in-law, Walli Carranza, said Thursday on Facebook that
her grandson, who remains in critical condition after he was shot in the
head, “has to fight for life again.” The boy, who was born prematurely at
about 24 weeks, had two operations in less than 24 hours, and his brain
activity remains uncertain, she said.

“What is the excuse for those who knew and did nothing,” Carranza wrote
about Moreno’s ability to obtain weapons, “and for legislators who refuse
to allow red flag laws but do allow anyone to buy an assault weapon?”

The word “Palestine” was written on the assault-style rifle Moreno used,
authorities said. She also made several statements during the incident,
which unfolded between services at the sprawling church complex; officials
declined to describe what she said.

Documented history of mental illness
Moreno was married to her son’s father, Enrique Carranza, from 2015 to
2022. Their son was born in 2016, and the pair had a contentious divorce.

The couple’s final divorce decree was issued in May 2022. In court
documents, Enrique Carranza described Moreno as a “diagnosed
schizophrenic” and violent and said their son was facing “physical and
developmental lags” under her care.

“I am afraid of her having my address. She has guns and she brags about it
while having my son in the car,” he said in an affidavit, adding that
“because of my wife’s schizophrenia, she does not have the capacity to
discern reality from fiction.”

Violence is relatively uncommon among people with serious mental
illnesses, such as schizophrenia, and while some studies show there may be
a link, researchers caution that factors such as substance abuse,
childhood trauma and the environment may be part of a person’s case,
according to the American Psychological Association.

Walli Carranza described Moreno’s alleged deteriorating mental health in
2022 affidavits related to the couple’s divorce and custody filings. She
said Moreno exhibited “erratic behavior” early on in the marriage and had
gotten help from psychiatrists.

Authorities had confiscated guns from Moreno several times.

Walli Carranza said she was also concerned about Moreno’s firearms. She
said that in 2020, while the couple stayed at her home in Colorado
Springs, Colorado, she asked her grandson, then 3, to bring his diaper bag
to her, and he “reached into it and grabbed an unlocked and loaded
handgun,” according to her affidavit.

Walli Carranza, a rabbi, said she later took the gun to the Colorado
Springs Police Department, which she served as a chaplain, and asked that
“they confiscate it” because she was concerned about Moreno’s having a gun
following her psychiatric evaluation in 2016.

But that wasn’t the only gun Moreno had. According to Walli Carranza, when
her son and Moreno left Colorado for Texas on an unspecified date, Moreno
“pulled another gun out from underneath the seat of her car while Enrique
was driving and pointed it at his head” while their son slept in the back
seat.

A sheriff’s deputy pulled the car over after seeing Enrique Carranza
driving slowly, and Carranza had the deputy call his mother. Walli
Carranza said in her affidavit that the deputy confiscated Moreno’s gun.

Moreno “told that officer that this was the only gun in her car but that
was a lie,” according to Walli Carranza.

Neither Carranza nor Moreno’s family replied to requests for comment.

Moreno had access to at least two more weapons in the following years.

In April 2022, she was arrested on a charge of unlawful carrying of a
weapon in Fort Bend County, Texas, where, authorities said, she had a
handgun in her car and was also found with drug paraphernalia, which makes
possession of the firearm illegal. She pleaded guilty six months later to
that charge, a misdemeanor.

As a result of that case, two guns belonging to Moreno, described as a
Smith & Wesson 9 mm handgun and an AR-15 rifle, were confiscated and
destroyed, Fort Bend County prosecutors said.

Moreno, who used multiple aliases over the years, was also found guilty in
about a half-dozen misdemeanor cases dating to 2005, including for forgery
and theft.

Texas isn’t among the 21 states with so-called red flag laws that
generally allow law enforcement officers to seize firearms from people
believed to be imminent threats to themselves or others.

Federal law does require people to fill out a form when they purchase from
federally licensed dealers indicating whether they have certain criminal
convictions, but it’s unclear whether Moreno bought her guns through a
retail outlet or a private seller, who wouldn’t have been required to ask
about her criminal history.

In Texas, people convicted of misdemeanors can possess guns with limited
exceptions, such as certain cases of domestic violence. Convicted felons
can also own guns with limitations but must wait until five years after
their sentences are completed, and the firearms must be kept in their
homes.

Scott Sweetow, a retired official with the federal Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said that in states without red flag
laws, like Texas, there’s a “vulnerability” posed by a person in a crisis
who has easy access to guns.

“Absent that active threat that somebody is going right now to a location
or they’ve been making death threats and they have a gun and they’re going
to act right now, absent something like that, you end up with the
situation that we see,” Sweetow said of shootings involving people with
known mental health issues. “Unfortunately, over and over and over again.”

Efforts to tighten Texas’ gun laws have been stymied in the Republican-
controlled Legislature in recent years in the wake of deadly school
shootings in Santa Fe, near Galveston, in 2018 and Uvalde in 2022.

Regardless, Sweetow said, law enforcement doesn’t have the authority to
“simply go over to somebody’s house and ask them if they have a gun,” then
confiscate the weapon on “the mere suspicion” that a person may have
mental health issues.

Threatening behavior
Some of Moreno’s neighbors in Conroe said they saw “warning signs” and
tried to convey to local law enforcement their alarming interactions with
her, alleging that she targeted, harassed and threatened them, displayed
firearms and made them fear being outside their homes.

Police records show at least 20 calls made to Moreno’s home from 2019 to
2023, some of them for allegations of harassment and threatening behavior.
Some of the incidents involve accusations neighbors made against Moreno,
as well as Moreno’s calling about “suspicious behavior” in her
neighborhood.

In June, a neighbor’s daughter filed a report alleging that Moreno was
stalking her mother and said she was “afraid that her mother will end up
dead.”

Conroe police said Tuesday they reviewed calls involving Moreno in recent
years and believe officers acted appropriately. The police records show
officers routinely found that despite complaints made by neighbors, no
actual crimes occurred.

“Nothing relayed to officers would give authority to arrest or require
mental health emergency detention; nor would any of the information have
been an indication that the suspect would commit such a heinous crime,”
the police department said in a statement.

Outside her home Wednesday, neighbor Janet Fields conceded that guns are
common: She carries one, another neighbor has a “no trespassing sign” with
an assault rifle pictured on it, and Moreno would display pictures of guns
in her home’s windows.

But Fields said something about Moreno’s behavior led her and husband to
pray for her. While she said Moreno shouldn’t have had a gun, she wondered
what more could have been done after neighbors tried to speak up despite
feeling intimidated by her and police decided there was no action to take.

“It’s hard to catch somebody early,” Fields said. “If they are going off
the rails, you don’t want to push them off the rails.”

Suzanne Gamboa reported from Conroe and Erik Ortiz from New York.



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