A mental health breakdown, explicit threats of deadly violence, a stockpile of assault-style weapons, a public plan of attack: The Feb. 11 deadly shooting at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church, a Christian megachurch in Houston, TX, was precipitated by critical warnings. Police, court officials and child welfare workers had the power and opportunity to intervene. But they failed to recognize the red flags.
A Houston Chronicle investigation reveals how institutional blind spots in Texas’ law enforcement, family court and social welfare systems let years of textbook “active shooter” warnings go unheeded, clearing the path for the tragedy to unfold. The attack left shooter Genesse Moreno dead, a 57-year-old man wounded and the shooter’s 7-year-old son semi-conscious with two bullets lodged in his brain.
Reporters collected dozens of recorded 911 calls and hundreds of pages of law enforcement reports and court filings to build a first-of-its-kind database of every interaction that Genesse Moreno, the shooter, had with government authorities in the decade leading up to the deadly attack. A monthslong analysis – informed by interviews with Moreno’s family members, friends and neighbors, government officials, and criminal justice, mental health and child welfare law experts – pinpoints more than 100 missed opportunities where authorities could have intervened.
The project’s immersive presentation invites readers to delve into the overwhelming volume of evidence that police, social workers and judges missed or overlooked. It chronicles Moreno’s tumultuous divorce and custody battle over her medically-fragile young child, a deepening spiral of mental illness and a pattern of erratic behavior that quickly escalated into aggression.
Audiences watch as grips of panic and paranoia give way to blinding rage in videos Moreno posted to social media. They hear her sobbing voice pleading for help on the phone with 911 operators. As Feb. 11–the day of the attack–approaches, they witness her chilling resolve to act on a decade’s worth of perceived injustices and attack a religious site. An interactive timeline anchors the narrative, illustrating how seemingly isolated events compounded into tragedy.
