Two men in a truck chase down Texas church shooter
SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas — A barefoot Texas man who grabbed his rifle and opened fire on the gunman who slaughtered 26 people at a small-town church was hailed as a hero Monday, along with the pickup truck driver who helped chase the killer down.
“I didn’t want this and I want the focus to be on my friends,” Stephen Willeford, 55, told The Dallas Morning News for a story published Monday that also confirmed he was the first person to confront Devin Patrick Kelley, 26. “I have friends in that church. I was terrified while this was going on.”
Johnnie Langendorff said he was driving to Sutherland Springs on Sunday to pick up his girlfriend when a man who’d been exchanging gunfire with Kelley suddenly landed inside his pickup truck.
“He jumped in my truck and said, ‘He just shot up the church, we need to go get him.’ And I said, ‘Let’s go,’” Langendorff, a 27-year-old Seguin resident, told The Associated Press on Monday.
Langendorrf said he didn’t know the name of the armed resident who had sheltered behind a parked pickup truck while exchanging gunfire with Kelley. But when the armed resident jumped into Langendorff’s truck, the pair immediately began pursuit of Kelley’s vehicle in a chase that clocked speeds upwards of 90 mph.
Texas Department of Public Safety Regional Director Freeman Martin said at a news conference Monday that the armed resident riding with Langendorff was toting an “AR assault rifle and engaged” the shooter.
Langendorff said Kelley eventually lost control of his vehicle and crashed, prompting the armed resident to cautiously approach the vehicle with his gun drawn. But Kelley didn’t move.
Police arrived about five minutes later, said Langendorff, who did not know if the resident had wounded Kelley during their earlier gunfire exchange. Based on evidence at the scene, investigators believe Kelley died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“There was no thinking about it,” Langendorff said. “There was just doing. That was the key to all this. Act now. Ask questions later.”
Asked if he felt like a hero, Langendorff said: “I don’t really know how I feel.”
