The former mother-in-law of the suspected Lakewood Church shooter released a statement calling the incident a “preventable horror” and asking for prayers for her critically injured grandson.
Walli Carranza, a rabbi residing in Mexico, addressed the recent shooting at the church in Houston that left a man in his late 50s and a 7-year-old child injured. As Carranza explained in a social media post, the 36-year-old woman alleged to be the shooter was her former daughter-in-law and, despite allegedly being “a very sweet and loving woman,” purportedly had schizophrenia.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Genesse Ivonne Moreno entered Lakewood Church with her 7-year-old son in tow during a Spanish-language service on February 11. She allegedly began shooting a long rifle before being shot by two off-duty law enforcement officers.
Carranza’s statement informed the public about the critical status of her grandson, who was shot in the brain during the episode and is being treated at Texas Children’s Hospital. It also made several suggestions about what may have led to the shooting and called for others to consider it as “a wake-up call.”
“[A]lthough my former daughter-in-law raged against Israel and Jews in a pro-Palestinian rant … this has nothing to do with Judaism or Islam. Nothing!” she wrote.
“The fault lies in a child protective services of Montgomery County and Harris County that refused to remove custody from a woman with known mental illness that was not being treated,” she claimed.
“[M]ental illness is real illness and when family members seek emergency protections they’re not doing so for their own sake but for the sake of the person who is ill. … And to protect her child and society,” she added.
Carranza went to Houston to support her grandson, who she described as “a fighter” in an interview with KHOU 11. She suggested that he likely had been living in terror long before the shooting.
“[T]his didn’t just happen, there were weeks and weeks before that. He must have been terrorized,” she said.