Before the Houston Megachurch Shooting: A Series of Warning Signs

Those who knew the woman who opened fire with an AR-15 rifle at Houston's Lakewood Church on Sunday said the warning signs had been flashing on and off for years.

She kept numerous guns, including once in her son's diaper bag, according to a relative — firearms she was able to obtain even after the relative said she was involuntarily hospitalized for psychiatric treatment in 2016.

Her neighbors said the woman, Genesse Ivonne Moreno, sometimes exhibited aggressive behavior that they feared. She directed anti-Semitic tirades against her Jewish in-laws during a lengthy and bitter divorce and custody dispute. At one point in the summer of 2022, her outbursts became so vicious that police in Conroe, Texas, were asked to check on her son's well-being.

Officers found firearms in the home but did not remove them, said Rabbi Walli Carranza, the boy's paternal grandmother, who requested the welfare check.

“They said yes, she has guns, but that's legal in Texas,” Ms. Carranza said. 'She can rage at you all she wants without being mentally ill. Her rants were very blasphemous and terrible, and they were very anti-Semitic.”

Ms. Moreno bought the assault rifle she used in the attack in December, officials said. She placed a sticker with the word 'Palestine' on the butt of the weapon.

In an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, Ms. Carranza described years of deteriorating interactions with her daughter-in-law, who was killed Sunday in a shootout with two off-duty officers at Lakewood Church. The church, led by Pastor Joel Osteen, is one of the largest megachurches in the country.

Ms. Moreno had her 7-year-old son with her when she opened fire in the church hallway, law enforcement officials said. During the gunfire, the boy was struck in the head by a bullet. Officials have not yet said who shot the boy. His condition was critical on Tuesday.

Ms. Carranza said she did not blame the officers for what happened to the boy. Instead, she said, she blamed state child welfare officials for leaving the boy with his mother, and the state of Texas for not passing a “red flag” law that would have allowed police or family members asked to seek a court order to remove the boy. weapons from Mrs. Moreno's house.

Federal law prohibits someone who has been involuntarily committed due to mental health problems from possessing a firearm; such a person would also not be allowed to purchase guns from federally licensed dealers. But it was not clear whether Ms. Moreno's previous hospitalization met the federal standard for the law to apply.

Although Texas does not have a red flag law, it prohibits issuing handgun carry permits to people with serious mental disorders, including people taking medications to prevent the disorders from returning.

Officials in Houston have said they are still investigating how Ms. Moreno obtained the two weapons she carried with her to the church: the AR-15 rifle she used in the attack and a .22-caliber rifle that was not used.

For Ms. Carranza, the shooting followed years of worries and fears and attempts to gain more control over the young boy's life, even after her son divorced Ms. Moreno in 2022. Litigation over the boy continued, Ms. Carranza said, and there was a hearing in May on the family's bid for conservatorship of the boy.

“This was a three-pronged failure,” Ms. Carranza said. “She should never have been able to buy a gun, not with that mental health history. She should have gotten the mental health care she needed.”

Ms. Carranza said she did not believe the attack was motivated by any religious ideology. Although her former daughter-in-law had once been a practicing Muslim, she said, “this has nothing to do with Islam. I am certain this rant was fueled by mental illness.”

Neighbors in Conroe noticed and became concerned about Ms. Moreno's behavior, which they said was at times threatening. “One day she pulled into my front yard, right on the street, and she stopped her car and gave me a 'go to hell' look, like, 'I'm going to hurt you,'” said Farrah Signorelli, a teacher who taught three lived doors down from Mrs. Moreno and taught her son at school. “I was scared. I watched every step I took.”

Ms. Moreno's reasons for attacking Lakewood Church, which officials said turned into a mass shooting, remained unclear. Ms. Moreno had a family connection to the church: Her mother was one of thousands of people who attended services in the cavernous sanctuary in a former basketball arena.

Ms. Carranza said that at one point, around 2019 or 2020, she contacted Lakewood Church out of desperation, hoping for help in watching over her grandson's well-being. She said she spoke to a “pastoral counselor” there and was unsure whether anyone from the church had contacted Ms. Moreno or her mother.

“They offered to talk to her; I don't know if that ever happened,” she said. “We were looking for someone who could help us. It's very difficult when you can't do anything else.”

A church spokesman, Donald Iloff, said no one could be found who remembered speaking to Ms. Carranza. “I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I don't have anyone who can remember anything about it,” Mr. Iloff said. He added that Ms. Moreno's mother may have attended the services, but there is no record of her being active in the church.

Ms. Moreno's mother did not respond to requests for comment.

The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office directed questions to Conroe police, who did not respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services said the agency is “investigating the shooting” with law enforcement, but that it is prohibited by law from discussing confidential family matters.

When Ms. Moreno married Enrique Carranza III, Ms. Carranza's son, in 2015, they were living in Houston. They seemed to get along immediately, Ms. Carranza said, despite their different religious backgrounds.

“When my son met her, she was a practicing Muslim,” but she didn't seem too serious about it, she said. “I suspect she was looking for something to make her feel better because she quickly latched onto his Judaism.”

Ms. Moreno was taking medication for schizophrenia at the time and was “doing beautifully,” Ms. Carranza said.

Things changed after she became pregnant and treatment had to stop, Ms. Carranza said. Soon, she said, Ms. Moreno's behavior became more unstable. Then Ms. Moreno disappeared altogether for a while, only to reappear when she prematurely gave birth to a baby boy at a Houston hospital in 2016.

After the birth, Ms. Carranza said, Ms. Moreno was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital — St. Joseph's in downtown Houston — and stayed there for several weeks. Christopher Hassig, commander of the Houston Police Department's homicide unit, said Ms. Moreno had been placed under an emergency detention order by the department.

At some point after her release from the hospital, Mrs. Moreno went to live with her mother in Conroe. In the following years, neighbors began to complain about her erratic and threatening behavior. But there were times during that period when she seemed better.

“She was a very good actor — she was a very good actress,” said Ms. Carranza, who lived in Colorado Springs and moved to France some time later. “They stayed at my house for a few weeks in 2020.”

It was during that time, Ms. Carranza said, that she discovered Ms. Moreno owned several handguns. “My grandson handed me a gun from his diaper bag,” she said.

Although she said police did not take weapons from Ms. Moreno in Conroe after she made the call in July 2022, Ms. Carranza said in court filings as part of the couple's divorce that police officers had taken weapons from her before, including in Colorado Springs. , where she lived for a while.

In January 2020, Wise County, Texas, sheriff's deputies took a gun after responding to a domestic dispute between Ms. Moreno and her husband as they drove through the county. According to Deputy Chief Craig Johnson, the gun was returned to her about a month later. Ms. Moreno was arrested in April 2022 on charges of unlawful possession of a weapon in Fort Bend County, outside Houston.

At that point, Mr. Carranza, who according to court records was afraid of his wife's behavior, including violence against him, filed for divorce. But the process took years. He won custody of their son, but then lost it.

Ms. Moreno, who had a history of arrests for minor crimes, pointed to Mr. Carranza's criminal history: a conviction for attempted sexual assault of a minor more than a decade earlier, stemming from what Ms. Carranza said was a teenage relationship with a younger girl.

When Mr. Carranza moved to Florida, Ms. Moreno reported him to local officials for failing to register as a sex offender there, Ms. Carranza said. He was eventually charged with that crime and is currently incarcerated in Florida, she said.

Ms. Carranza said she had not heard from Ms. Moreno since 2022. After hearing about the Houston shooting from news reports on Sunday, she said she initially worried that her daughter-in-law and grandson might have been at the church. , in the presence of Mrs. Moreno's mother. She tried to call, but got no answer.

She said she was more concerned about the description of a female attacker accompanied by a boy who looked about five, which is what her grandson could have looked like even though he was seven.

“Sometimes you just know,” she said. “So I called the Houston Police Department and asked them to do a welfare check.” She said it may have helped identify Ms. Moreno, “as she apparently had no identification on her at the time.”

Edgar Sandoval contributed reporting from San Antonio.