A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the U.S. Air Force holds most of the responsibility for the 2017 mass shooting in a Texas church, according to Axios.
Devin Kelley, 26 served nearly five years in the Air Force before he was discharged in 2014 after he was convicted of assaulting his wife and cracking the skull of his stepson. He was sentenced to a year in prison which should have prevent him from purchasing a gun.
The Air Force has publicly acknowledged that the felony conviction for domestic violence, had it been put into the FBI database, could have prevented Kelley from buying guns from licensed firearms dealers, and also from possessing body armor, according to USA Today.
In 2017, Kelly opened fire during a Sunday service at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs killing 26 people and wounded 22 others. He killed himself shortly afterwards in what was the deadliest mass shooting in Texas history.
U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez for the Western District of Texas ruled that the Air Force holds 60% of the responsibility for the shooting because it failed to enter Kelley’s criminal history into a federal background check database used for gun purchases and the killer was 40 percent responsible.
The courts ruled last year that the government failed to “exercise reasonable care” when it did not submit Kelley’s fingerprints and conviction to the FBI, which runs the NICS.
“The trial conclusively established that no other individual—not even Kelley’s own parents or partners—knew as much as the United States about the violence that Devin Kelley had threatened to commit and was capable of committing,” Rodriguez wrote. “Moreover, the evidence shows that—had the Government done its job and properly reported Kelleys information into the background check system—it is more likely than not Kelley would have been deterred from carrying out the Church shooting,” he added.
