Site of deadliest church shooting in US history is torn down over protests by some Texas families

SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas (AP) — Crews on Monday tore down a Texas church where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshippers in 2017, using heavy machinery to raze the small building even after some families sought to preserve the scene of the deadliest church shooting in U.S. history.

A judge cleared the way last month for the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs to tear down the sanctuary where the attack took place, which until now had been kept as a memorial. Church members voted in 2021 to tear it down, but some families in the community of less than 1,000 people filed a lawsuit hoping for a new vote on the building’s fate.

Authorities put the number of dead in the Nov. 5, 2017, shooting at 26 people, including a pregnant woman and her unborn baby. After the shooting, the interior of the sanctuary was painted white and chairs with the names of those who were killed were placed there. A new church was completed for the congregation about a year and a half after the shooting.

John Riley, an 86-year-old member of the church, watched with sadness and disappointment as the long arm of a yellow excavator swung a heavy claw into the building over and over.

“The devil got his way,” Riley said, “I would not be the man I am without that church.”

He said he would pray for God to “punish the ones” who put the demolition in motion.

“That was God’s house, not their house,” Riley said.

For many in the community, the sanctuary was a place of solace.

Terrie Smith, president of the Sutherland Springs Community Association, visited often over the years, calling it a place where “you feel the comfort of everybody that was lost there.” Among those killed in the shooting were a woman who was like a daughter to Smith — Joann Ward — and Ward’s two daughters, ages 7 and 5.

Smith watched Monday as the memorial sanctuary was torn down.

“I am sad, angry, hurt,” she said.

In early July, a Texas judge granted a temporary restraining order sought by some families. But another judge later denied a request to extend that order, setting in motion the demolition. In court filings, attorneys for the church called the structure a “constant and very painful reminder."

Attorneys for the church argued that it was within its rights to demolish the memorial while the attorney for the families who filed the lawsuit said they were just hoping to get a new vote.

“It’s a very somber day for us,” said Amber Holder, a church member who was a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

She said she wasn’t at the service on the day of the shooting but arrived soon after. As a teen, she was taken in by the family of the pastor, whose 14-year-old daughter, Annabelle Pomeroy, was among those killed.

Holder said the church had become a piece of history and that the scars on the building from that day, including bullet holes, were a powerful reminder of what happened.

“Tearing it down, no good comes from that,” Holder said.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs alleged that some church members were wrongfully removed from the church roster before the vote was taken. In a court filing, the church denied the allegations in the lawsuit.

A woman who answered the phone at the church said Monday that she had no comment then hung up.

The man who opened fire in the church, Devin Patrick Kelley, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after he was chased by bystanders and crashed his car. Investigators have said the shooting appeared to stem from a domestic dispute involving Kelley and his mother-in-law, who sometimes attended services at the church but was not present on the day of the shooting.

Communities across the U.S. have grappled with what should happen to the sites of mass shootings. Last month, demolition began on the three-story building where 17 people died in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. After the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, it was torn down and replaced.

Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, New York, and the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where racist mass shootings happened, both reopened. In Colorado, Columbine High School still stands, though its library, where most of the victims were killed, was replaced.

In Texas, officials closed Robb Elementary in Uvalde after the 2022 shooting there and plan to demolish the school.

Stengle reported from Dallas.

A demolition worker walks across the slab of what was the First Baptist Church where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshipers in 2017, in Sutherland Springs, Texas, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

A demolition worker walks across the slab of what was the First Baptist Church where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshipers in 2017, in Sutherland Springs, Texas, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Workers continue demolition of the First Baptist Church where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshipers in 2017, in Sutherland Springs, Texas, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Workers begin demolition of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshipers in 2017. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Workers begin demolition of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshipers in 2017. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Workers begin demolition of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshipers in 2017. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Workers begin demolition of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshipers in 2017. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Workers begin demolition of the Sutherland Springs church where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshipers in 2017, in Sutherland Springs, Texas, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Workers begin demolition of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshipers in 2017. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Workers begin demolition of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshipers in 2017. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

A woman passes by as workers begin demolition of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshipers in 2017. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

John Riley, 86, watches as workers begin demolition of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshipers in 2017. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

FILE - Christina Osborn and her children Alexander Osborn and Bella Araiza visit a makeshift memorial for the victims of the shooting at Sutherland Springs Baptist Church, Nov. 12, 2017, in Sutherland Springs, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

FILE - Karen Johns visits the First Baptist Church, now a memorial to the 26 people who were killed by a gunman in 2017, in Sutherland Springs, Texas, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

Workers begin demolition of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshipers in 2017. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Workers begin demolition of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshipers in 2017. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Workers begin demolition of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshipers in 2017. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Workers begin demolition of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshipers in 2017. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Workers begin demolition of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshipers in 2017. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

AVIGNON, France (AP) — A 71-year-old French man acknowledged in court on Tuesday that over nearly a decade, he was drugging his wife at the time and inviting dozens of men to rape her, as well as raping her himself. He pleaded with her, and their three children, for forgiveness.

“Today I maintain that, along with the other men here, I am a rapist,″ Dominique Pélicot told the court. “They knew everything. They can’t say otherwise.”

Dominique Pélicot's testimony is the most important moment so far in a trial that has shocked and gripped France, and raised new awareness about sexual violence. Many also hope his testimony will shed some light — to try to understand the unthinkable.

While he previously confessed to investigators, the court testimony will be crucial for the panel of judges to decide on the fate of some 50 other men standing trial alongside him. Many deny having raped Gisèle Pélicot, saying they were manipulated by her then-husband or claiming they believed she was consenting.

Gisèle Pélicot has become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in France for agreeing to waive her anonymity in the case, letting the trial be public, and appearing openly in front of the media. She is expected to speak in court after her ex-husband’s testimony on Tuesday.

Under French law, the proceedings inside the courtroom cannot be filmed or photographed. Dominique Pélicot is brought to the court through a special entrance inaccessible for the media, because he and some other defendants are being held in custody during the trial. Defendants who are not in custody come to the trial wearing surgical masks or hoods to avoid having their faces filmed or photographed.

After days of uncertainty due to his medical state, Dominique Pélicot appeared in court Tuesday and told judges he acknowledged all the charges against him.

His much-awaited testimony was delayed by days after he fell ill, suffering from a kidney stone and urinary infection, his lawyers said.

Seated in a wheelchair, Pélicot spoke to the court for an hour, from his early life to years of abuse against his now ex-wife.

Expressing remorse, his voice trembling and at times barely audible, he sought to explain events that he said scarred his childhood and planted the seed of vice in him.

“One is not born a pervert, one becomes a pervert,” Pélicot told judges, after recounting, sometimes in tears, being raped by a male nurse in hospital when he was 9 years old and then being forced to take part in a gang rape at age 14.

Pélicot also spoke of the trauma endured when his parents took a young girl in the family, and witnessing his father’s inappropriate behavior toward her.

“My father used to do the same thing with the little girl,'' he said. “After my father’s death, my brother said that men used to come to our house.”

At 14, he said, he asked his mother if he could leave the house, but “she didn’t let me.”

“I don’t really want to talk about this, I am just ashamed of my father. In the end, I didn’t do any better,'' he said.

Asked about his feelings toward his wife, Pélicot said she did not deserve what he did.

“From my youth, I remember only shocks and traumas, forgotten partly thanks to her. She did not deserve this, I acknowledge it,” he said in tears.

At that moment, Gisèle Pélicot, standing across the room, facing him across a group of dozens of defendants sitting in between them, put her sunglasses back on.

Later, Dominique Pélicot said, “I was crazy about her. She replaced everything. I ruined everything.”

A security agent caught Pélicot in 2020 filming videos under women’s skirts in a supermarket, according to court documents. Police searched Pélicot’s house and electronic devices, and found thousands of photos and videos of men engaging in sexual acts with Gisèle Pélicot while she appears to lie unconscious on their bed.

With the recordings, police were able to track down a majority of the 72 suspects they were seeking.

Gisèle Pélicot and her husband of 50 years had three children. When they retired, the couple left the Paris region to move into a house in Mazan, a small town in Provence.

When police officers called her in for questioning in late 2020, she initially told them her husband was “a great guy,″ according to legal documents. They then showed her some photos. She left her husband and they are now divorced.

He faces 20 years in prison if convicted. Besides Pélicot, 50 other men, aged 26 to 74, are standing trial.

Bernadette Tessonière, a 69-year-old retiree who lives a half-hour drive from Avignon, where the trial is taking place, arrived outside the courthouse at 7:15 a.m. to make sure she would secure a seat in the closely watched case.

“How is it possible that in 50 years of communal life, one can live next to someone who hides his life so well? This is scary,” she said, while standing in a line outside the courthouse. “I don’t have much hope that what he did can be explained, but he is at least going to give some elements.”

FILE - Gisele Pelicot speaks to media as she leaves the Avignon court house, southern France, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly, File)

FILE - Gisele Pelicot, left, arrives in the Avignon court house, in Avignon, southern France, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly, File)

FILE - Gisele Pelicot, left, arrives in the Avignon court house, in Avignon, southern France, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly, File)