Videos Show Exchange of Gunfire at Houston Megachurch

Just before she opened fire with an assault rifle in the lobby of a Houston megachurch this month, Genesse Ivonne Moreno walked around the side of her SUV and opened a rear passenger door for her 7-year-old son, who got out. from the vehicle and followed her into the church.

Moments later, as deafening gunfire erupted inside the church, the boy stood in an alcove with his hands pressed to his ears, according to surveillance and body camera footage released Monday by Houston police. At one point, the boy appeared to reach out to Ms. Moreno, as if asking to be picked up.

He could later be seen lying motionless on the hallway floor after being shot in the head.

The videos provided a clearer picture of the Feb. 11 shooting at Lakewood Church, one of the nation’s largest megachurches led by televangelist Joel Osteen. But they did not give a full account of what happened.

And they didn’t show the boy being beaten, leaving open the question of who shot him. He remained hospitalized in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the head, officials said.

One officer belatedly activated a body camera, Houston Police Department Assistant Chief Keith Seafous said in an introduction to a compilation of the different videos. Another couldn’t activate her camera.

When the shooting began, there appeared to be several armed officers in the hallway. Officials have said off-duty law enforcement officers secured the church. Two of them opened fire, police said: an off-duty Houston police officer and a Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agent.

One video showed Ms. Moreno arriving at the church in her car just before 2 p.m., when officials and witnesses said an English-language service ended and a Spanish service began.

She was seen walking into the building without being stopped, holding her son’s hand, and then walking down a main hallway on the west side of the church, with the rifle under a trench coat and another rifle in a backpack.

“Ms. Moreno attempted to enter the sanctuary, but the entry doors were locked,” Assistant Chief Seafous said in the introduction to the video compilation. “An off-duty HPD officer working as church security was confronted by a Lakewood volunteer Church that Ms. Moreno had a gun. The officer immediately observed Ms. Moreno. She and the officer exchanged gunfire.

The sound of gunfire was thunderous in the wide, high hallway.

Mr Seafous said the off-duty liquor commission officer heard the gunfire and also fired at the attacker.

At one point, after initially walking in one direction with her son, Ms. Moreno walked back past the entrance and walked down the hallway without the boy. “You killed my son,” she was heard saying. ‘All I need is help. I need help, that’s all.”

A moment later she added, “There’s a bomb in this bag. Stop shooting.”

“Put the gun down,” an officer shouted.

‘I won’t do that. The bomb is going off,” Ms. Moreno replied.

In a separate surveillance video, Ms. Moreno, alone and in the middle of the hallway, appeared to put the gun on the ground and remove items from her backpack. It was not clear whether putting down the weapon was in response to the officer.

She took a few steps down the hallway and then returned to the gun before she was shot. According to police, no bomb was discovered.

A bystander at the church was also shot in the hip, Mr. Seafous said. He was later released from hospital.

It was not clear what had brought Ms. Moreno, 36, to the prominent megachurch. According to her son’s grandmother, Walli Carranza, her mother had attended services there.

Ms. Carranza has said she does not blame the officers involved in the shooting for her grandson’s serious injury. Instead, she said in an interview this month, she accused state child welfare officials of leaving the boy, who had a troubled childhood, with his mother, who had a history of mental health problems and was arrested in 2022 for unlawful possession of weapons.