“Palestine” was written on the Houston megachurch shooter’s gun, a law enforcement official said on Monday. Investigators still have not determined the gunman’s motives.
Genessee Ivonne Moreno, 36, entered celebrity-pastor Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Texas on Sunday afternoon accompanied by a child, firing as many as twelve shots. Off-duty officers quickly struck and killed Moreno, who the Houston Police Department says shot and injured one Lakewood parishioner. The child, a boy believed to be younger than five, was also injured.
Moreno’s rifle read “Palestine,” law enforcement said during a Monday press briefing. Local media originally reported that the rifle read “Free Palestine,” a phrase used by anti-Zionists to demand the elimination of the state of Israel. Moreno also made verbal statements during the shooting, which police have not yet publicized.
“I don’t want to talk about her motivations because I don’t know. Right?” Houston police chief Troy Finner said. “We may never know the full story. But the important message is we’re going to stand together as a city. We’re going to stand with this church today and the pastor to make sure that healing begins immediately.”
Originally from El Salvador, Moreno was born as a biological male under the name Jeffrey Escalante, Fox News reported on Monday. The shooter had a criminal history, including the assault of a police officer in 2009.
Investigators acquired a search warrant on Monday to discover more information about the gunman’s motives. Harris County judge Lina Hidalgo asked investigators to treat Sunday’s shooting as a potential hate crime as the shooting happened during Lakewood’s all-Spanish service.
“I will not make any assumptions because information continues to come in as to what motivated the shooter, but I am asking that the investigation look into whether it was a hate crime, given the shooting took place at an all-Spanish service,” Hidalgo said. “We all stand with the Lakewood congregation as they recover from this terrifying day and with the young child and adult who are known to have been hurt in the shooting.”
FBI director Christopher Wray said in October that antisemitic threats had reached “historic levels” following Hamas’s October 7 attack against Israel, in which Hamas killed 1,200 and took hundreds of Israelis hostage. Across the country, from New York City to Los Angeles, the number of anti-Jewish hate crimes has skyrocketed.