Texas shooter claimed to buy animals on Craigslist for 'target practice,' former colleague says

[japple]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/09/us/texas-church-shooting-former-colleague/index.html

Alamogordo, New Mexico (CNN)Texas church shooter Devin Kelley claimed he bought animals on Craigslist with the sole intention of killing them, a former Air Force colleague told CNN.

Jessika Edwards, who says she worked with Kelley at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico from 2010 to 2012, said Kelley told her he was "using the dogs as target practice."
The morbid admission came in Facebook messages starting in 2014, Edwards said, after the two reconnected in civilian life. Though Edwards can't say whether Kelley was telling the truth, the odd behavior was enough for her to stop communicating with him.

This is why you never, ever, ever try to rehome or, god forbid, sell a pet on Craigslist or other yardsale sites.

[gratuitous]

1. It's a shame he's dead

I could totally see Trump picking this guy to head up the Department of the Interior.

[maveric]

2. You can file him under: Sick Fuck.

[japple]

3. Those of us who work in animal rescue know that Craigslist is where

a lot of dog fighters get their bait dogs. Other scumbags like to buy animals for torture, sexually deviant purposes, or to try to flip them and make a profit. These people are slick as snake oil salesmen. Seller beware.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. This guy was a total mess.

And a lot of people knew he was a mess. But being weird in an ominous way isn't illegal, so if you go to the police to tell them someone you know claims to be doing disturbing things, or says he wants to do disturbing things, or likes to talk about mass murder, they won't do anything. They can't. So what do you do about a creepy weirdo who says shit like that?

[Lee-Lee]

6. If he says hes committing a crime they damm sure can do something

And buying dogs and using them for target practice damm sure qualifies.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

7. That part, definitely. And it should have been investigated if possible.

But just general creepy weirdness - that's harder to deal with. All you can do is warn others, I guess.

[Lee-Lee]

5. This just bears out what Ive said before

When you see stuff like the FUCKING TELL SOMEONE.


These were Facebook messages. That makes it provable and easy to screenshot and send to local authorities that he is admitting to a crime.

And the first thing the local police will do is run a check on his background. While the info on his conviction wasn’t in NICS it will be in NCIC and they will see right then he wasn’t legally allowed to own guns and yet admired to not only having them but engaging in animal cruelty with them.

Can we say for sure this wouldn’t had happened had she reported what he was saying? No. We can say there is a strong chance an intervention that prevented this would have happened. And we can say it wouldn’t have made things any worse.