Demolition of deadliest American mass church shooting site begins despite community opposition
First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, plans to replace the building with an open-air memorial to victims.
The First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, is set to be demolished following a legal go-ahead last month, despite community opposition.
The sanctuary, which had been preserved as a memorial, was the site of a 2017 shooting that claimed the lives of more than two dozen people. The attacker, Devin Patrick Kelley, killed 26 churchgoers, including the unborn child of a pregnant woman, before dying due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
It is the deadliest mass shooting in Texas history and the deadliest at an American place of worship, surpassing the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Charleston, S.C., church shooting of 2015.
Church members voted in August 2021 to demolish the church building where the shooting occurred and replace the site with an open-air memorial to the victims. The Southern Baptist church congregation has since moved to a new sanctuary built 18 months after the massacre.
The church’s pastor, Frank Pomeroy, who lost his daughter in the shooting, expressed that the church’s existence as a place of worship was too painful to bear. Pomeroy retired in 2022, according to the church’s website.