Houston Police Department
Texas authorities on Monday released footage capturing the harrowing moments before, during, and after a woman walked into celebrity pastor Joel Osteen’s Houston megachurch and opened fire earlier this month, an incident that ended in her death at the hands of two off-duty officers. Two other people were injured in the attack, including the shooter’s 7-year-old son, who remains hospitalized in critical condition.
The video, posted on the Houston Police Department’s Critical Incidents YouTube channel, shows Genesse Ivonne Moreno, 36, arriving at Lakewood Church in a white SUV, a young child trailing in her wake. From there, body camera footage taken from the pair of off-duty officers at the church and a Harris County sheriff’s deputy, shows police on the scene scrambling to respond as shots begin to ring out, scattering confused and terrified parishioners.
One angle catches an officer praying as she moves towards the gunfire. “We need to approach. Father God, just be with us,” she says. “Forgive us our sins.”