7-year-old son of Houston church shooter still struggles to survive

A 7-year-old boy who was shot in the head on Sunday when his mother opened fire at a Houston megachurch has undergone at least two surgeries in 24 hours and “lost a big part of what makes us who we are,” his grandmother said. said in an update Thursday.

The surgeries included removing part of the brain's frontal lobe and part of the skull, grandmother Walli Carranza said in a post on Facebook. It included a shocking photo of the child from his hospital bed, where officials said he was still in critical condition. She said the boy was in a “fight for life.”

Authorities said the boy, Samuel, was with his mother on Sunday when she entered Lakewood Church in Houston just after a service led by televangelist Joel Osteen. The mother, Genesse Ivonne Moreno, opened fire with an AR-15 and was killed in a shootout with two security guards, officials said. It is still unknown who fired the shots that struck Ms. Moreno's son and injured a bystander, a 57-year-old man who has since been released from hospital.

Interviews with people who know the family, police records and legal documents from a divorce and custody battle filed by the child's relatives provided a glimpse into Samuel's troubled upbringing, starting with his premature birth in 2016, when his mother was just was six months pregnant.

His father, Enrique Carranza III, Mrs. Carranza's son, described him in the divorce case as a toddler who often hit and bit anyone who tried to touch him. Because he was kept indoors most of the time, he didn't see a bird or a tree until he was three, his father told the court.

In a 74-page statement of her own, Ms. Carranza, a rabbi, wrote that her daughter-in-law had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and that it began to unravel after she stopped taking her medications during her pregnancy. She then described Ms. Moreno as a distant parent who avoided eye contact with her son and referred to him as “the boy” or “the kid.”

A hearing was scheduled for May on the family's bid to gain custody of the boy.

Ms. Moreno's behavior had become so erratic in recent months that many of her neighbors in Conroe, Texas, a small city near Houston, complained that she was creating an environment of fear in the otherwise quiet neighborhood. Conroe police recorded dozens of calls to the block where Ms. Moreno lived with her mother, based primarily on complaints of harassment, threats and disorderly conduct. According to police call logs, many of the calls came from Ms. Moreno herself. But it seemed that authorities were reluctant to intervene in what were seen as personal matters.

When Ms. Carranza contacted them in July 2020 and shared a large number of emails that she said raised concerns about her grandson's safety, police reviewed them and determined that “no violation occurred,” according to the data.

The officer wrote that the local district attorney “would not accept allegations of harassment” due to the couple's divorce battle.

A police spokesman, Sgt. David Dickenson said none of the many calls resulted in an incident that would warrant police intervention.

“There was no information from the complainants or from the neighbors that would give officers the authority to make arrests or mental health detentions,” he said. “If there is no violation of the law, we have no authority to do anything.”

In an interview, Ms. Carranza said Ms. Moreno and her son made a good couple when they started dating, despite the fact that he was Jewish and she a practicing Muslim.

In the first days after their wedding in June 2015, Ms. Moreno was doing “beautifully” as she took her medication, Ms. Carranza said. But things changed when Ms. Moreno learned she was pregnant and stopped, she said. She became violent and unstable and was involuntarily admitted for psychiatric treatment to a hospital in Houston, where she remained for several weeks.

During those early years, her daughter-in-law had several weapons in the home, including a gun in Samuel's diaper bag, Ms. Carranza said in an affidavit.

Unable to cope with what he described as his wife's violent outbursts, Mr. Carranza said in the court filings, he filed for divorce. The animosity between the two led to him losing sight of his son, he said. During a 2021 divorce case hearing, he testified that he was not present for his son's birth and did not learn about it until the following month.

“She told the hospital I was dead,” he testified.

In her own affidavit, Ms. Moreno alleged that Mr. Carranza had committed physical violence during their marriage. “On numerous occasions,” she wrote, “he made me fear for my safety.”

Mr Carranza said it appeared his wife, who apparently lived with her mother, tried to keep him away from his son, but he was able to track them down three years after his birth.

“I found her and we spent about two months together every day,” he told the court.

He said he was shocked to learn that the boy was in a near-feral state, unable to speak, prone to anger and still dependent on a feeding tube to eat.

'He didn't say anything at all. He showed violence. I mean, you picked him up and he punched you in the face,” Mr. Carranza told the court. “He just makes noises and you know; I say things to him, but at least he tried to say words.

He said he took his son to different parks and beaches, which he described as Samuel's first experience with a playground or the outdoors. Getting him to eat solid food proved more challenging, Mr. Carranza said. The original goal, he said, was to keep the boy from “shuddering at the sight of food.”

He also heard that an attempt at intervention had been made much earlier. He testified that he had learned that Texas child welfare authorities had investigated allegations that the boy was born with drugs in his system, but never informed Mr. Carranza because his wife deliberately left his name on his son's birth certificate had left behind.

Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the Department of Family and Protective Services, said Friday that he could not comment on Samuel's case due to privacy restrictions.

According to inmate records, Mr. Carranza is currently serving a prison sentence of more than two years in Florida for failing to register as a sex offender. His mother said the case stems from a statutory rape case several years ago, when he was in a relationship with an underage girl at the age of 18. Mrs. Carranza said she believes her daughter-in-law reported her son to authorities when he moved to Florida.

Officials have said that Ms. Moreno appeared to have purchased the AR-15 used in the attack on the church in December, and that she also took a .22 caliber rifle, hidden in a bag, but did not use it.

Authorities have not said how she purchased the weapons.

Since the shooting, Ms. Carranza wrote in her Facebook post that Samuel's heart had stopped several times and that doctors could not determine whether he had significant brain activity because his scalp tissue was too fragile to allow the necessary wires to be attached.

Neighbors in Conroe have been anxiously awaiting an update.

Farrah Signorelli, who lives three doors down from Ms. Moreno's home, was the boy's special education teacher.

She described him as a small and weak child with curly hair who looked younger than most seven-year-olds. She said he was usually unable to speak and had difficulty making friends in his class, which also included other children with special needs. She said he often seemed hungry: His mother, she said, would send him to school with “at most” two or three chicken nuggets. She said she offered him goldfish treats when he seemed to want more food. “We made sure he ate,” she said.

She said the boy stopped going to school at the end of October. She saw him in the back of his mother's car on Halloween and said she breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that he seemed fine.

The next time she heard about him, she learned he had been shot at Lakewood Church.

J. David Goodman reporting contributed. Alain Delaqueriere research contributed.