Houston church shooter’s son fights to survive

NY.- A 7-year-old boy shot in the head when his mother opened fire at a Houston megachurch on Sunday has undergone at least two surgeries in 24 hours and “lost an important part of what makes us who we are. “Who we are, ” his grandmother said in an update Thursday.

The surgery involved removing part of the frontal lobe of the brain and part of the skull, the grandmother, Wali Carranza, said in a Facebook post. It included a chilling photo of the boy from his hospital bed, where authorities said he was in critical condition. He said the boy was immersed in a “fight for life”.

Authorities said the boy, Samuel, was with his mother Sunday when he attended Lakewood Church in Houston, after a service led by televangelist Joel Osteen. The mother, Genesee Yvonne Moreno, opened fire with an AR-15 and was killed in the shootout along with two security guards, according to authorities. It is still unknown who fired the shot that hit Ms. Moreno’s son and wounded a 57-year-old man, who was released from hospital.

Interviews with people familiar with the family, police records and legal documents from the divorce and custody battle brought by the boy’s paternal relatives offered a window into Samuel’s troubled upbringing, beginning with his premature birth in 2016 when his mother was just six months old. .

His father, Enrique Carranza III, Ms. Carranza’s son, described him during the divorce trial as a small boy who would repeatedly hit and bite anyone who tried to touch him. His father testified in court that he did not see birds or trees until he was three years old, as he spent most of his time indoors.

In a 74-page affidavit, Mrs. Carranza, who is a rabbi, wrote that her daughter-in-law had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and became unstable when she stopped taking medication during pregnancy. Afterward, he described Ms. Moreno as a distant mother who avoided eye contact with her son and referred to him as “boy” or “boy.”

A hearing on the family’s request to grant custody of Ward was scheduled for May.

Ms. Moreno’s behavior had become so erratic in recent months that many of her neighbors in Conroe, Texas, a small town near Houston, complained that she created an atmosphere of fear in an otherwise quiet neighborhood. The Conroe Police Department recorded dozens of calls on the block where Ms. Moreno lived with her mother, primarily based on complaints of harassment, threats and disorderly conduct. According to police call logs, many of the calls came from Ms. Moreno herself. But the authorities seemed reluctant to intervene in what was considered a personal matter.

When Ms. Carranza contacted them in July 2020 and shared a series of emails in which she said she was concerned about her grandson’s safety, police reviewed them and determined that “no crime had been committed.” “, according to records.

The agent wrote that the local district attorney did not want to “admit harassment charges” because of the couple’s divorce battle.

Police Department spokesman Sergeant David Dickinson said none of the numerous calls were incidents that required police intervention.

“There was no information provided by the complainants, by the neighbors that would have given the agents the authority to make an arrest or psychiatric detention,” he said. “If there is no violation of the law, we have no right to do anything.”

In an interview, Ms. Carranza said that Ms. Moreno and her son were a good couple when they started dating even though he was Jewish and she was Muslim.

In the early days after their wedding in June 2015, Ms. Moreno “did great” when she took her medication, Ms. Carranza said. But when Ms. Moreno found out she was pregnant and stopped taking it, she said. She became violent and unstable and was involuntarily admitted to a Houston hospital for psychiatric treatment, where she remained for several weeks.

During those early years, her daughter-in-law kept several weapons in the home, including a gun in Samuel’s diaper bag, Ms. Carranza said in the affidavit.

Unable to cope with what he described as his wife’s violent outbursts, Mr. Carranza said in court papers, he filed for divorce. He had lost track of his son due to the rivalry between the two, he said. During a divorce hearing in 2021, she testified that she was not present during the birth of her son and did not find out until the following month.

“She said at the hospital that I was dead,” he revealed.

In her own affidavit, Ms. Moreno alleged that Mr. Carranza physically abused her during their marriage. “On numerous occasions,” he wrote, “he made me fear for my safety.”

Mr. Carranza said it appeared his wife, who apparently lived with his mother, was trying to keep him away from their son, but he was able to find her three years after his birth.

“I found her and we spent almost every day together for two months,” he told the court.

He said he was horrified to learn that the boy was in an almost feral state, unable to speak, angry and still dependent on a feeding tube to eat.

“He didn’t talk. He showed violence. You pick him up and he hits you in the face,” Mr Carranza told the court. “He was just making noises and you know; I was telling him things, but at least, you know, he was trying to say the words.”

He said he took his son to many parks and beaches, which provided what he described as Samuel’s playground or first experience of the outdoors. Feeding him solid food, Mr. Carranza said, proved more difficult. The initial goal, he said, was to make sure the child “doesn’t vomit when he sees food.”

He also learned that intervention had been attempted a long time ago. He testified that he learned that Texas child welfare officials had investigated allegations that the child had been born with drugs in his system, but had never informed Mr. Carranza because his wife had deliberately removed his name from the birth certificate. The birth of his son.

Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the Department of Family and Protective Services, said Friday that he could not comment on Samuel’s case because of privacy restrictions.

Mr. Carranza is currently serving more than two years in prison in Florida for failing to register as a sex offender, according to inmate records. His mother said the case arose out of a statutory rape case several years ago when, at the age of 18, he had a relationship with a minor. Ms. Carranza said she believed her daughter-in-law reported her son to authorities when he moved to Florida.

Authorities have said Ms. Moreno appeared to have purchased the AR-15 used in the church attack in December and brought with her a .22-caliber rifle hidden in a bag, but did not use it.

Authorities have not specified how he obtained the weapons.

After the shooting, Ms. Carranza wrote in her Facebook message that Samuel’s heart had stopped several times and that doctors could not determine if he had significant brain activity because the tissue in his scalp was too fragile to accommodate the necessary space. Cannot allow for. cable

Connor residents are anxiously awaiting any news.

Farah Signorelli, who lives three doors down from Ms. Moreno’s home, was the boy’s special education teacher.

She described him as a small, frail boy with curly hair who looked younger than most 7-year-olds. He said he could barely speak and had trouble making friends in his class, which was attended by other children with special needs. He said he often felt hungry: His mother, he said, sent him to school with “two or three chicken nuggets at most.” He said he offered her goldfish snacks when she wanted more food. “We made sure he ate,” he said.

He said the boy stopped going to school in late October. On Halloween she saw him in the back of her mother’s vehicle and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw he was okay.

The next time she heard from him, she learned he had been shot at a Lakewood church.