No motive revealed in church shooting

DALLAS — Details about the gunman who killed two people inside a White Settlement church before he was fatally shot began to emerge Monday, but authorities have offered no motive for his attack.

The Texas Department of Public Safety said Keith Thomas Kinnunen, 43, of River Oaks opened fire during a Sunday morning service at the West Freeway Church of Christ, killing Anton Wallace, 64, of Fort Worth and Richard White, 67 of River Oaks.

The FBI said Kinnunen had roots in the area but indicated he may have been transient, with arrests in various jurisdictions. Public records show he had been arrested in Tarrant County and other states on charges including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Kinnunen had been to the church several times but described him as a loner.

"When you have a dead shooter, motivations are a lot harder to find unless something's been found in writing," he said.

Tiffany Wallace, the daughter of the man the attacker approached moments before the attack, told KXAS-TV her father had just finished offering communion to the congregation when he was shot.

Her father, Anton Wallace, was a "godly person" who worked as a nurse, she said.

"Even when we talked about going to heaven, he always said, 'I'm always prepared,' " she said. "But you never thought this would happen."

When she realized her father had been shot, she ran to where he had been standing near the back of the church.

"The last thing I remember is him asking for oxygen, and I was just holding him, telling him I loved him and that he was going to make it," Tiffany Wallace said.

Seconds after Anton Wallace was shot, a nearby member of the church's volunteer security team returned fire.

Jack Wilson, who's running for a Hood County commissioner seat, has been widely credited for firing the shot that stopped Kinnunen.

"The events at West Freeway Church of Christ put me in a position I would hope no one would have to be in, but evil ... (exists) and I had to take out an active shooter in church," Wilson wrote on Facebook.

Wilson could not be reached for comment Monday, but he has said he is the deacon in charge of security at the church and leaned on years of training when the shooting began to unfold.

"You hope you never have to go to that extreme, but if you do, your training will kick in," Wilson said.

He said he fired one round at the gunman, then focused on making sure Kinnunen didn't get up while others rushed to help the gunman's victims.

Paxton said Monday that he hopes more churches will prepare for shootings the way West Freeway Church of Christ did.

He said that after Texas passed legislation that made it clearer people can carry handguns into places of worship, the church's leadership decided to train its members to protect each other.

"I think you can see from the video that that guy was surrounded rather quickly by more than just a few people," Paxton said.

Wilson, who has been credited for providing firearms training to members of the congregation, ran the On Target Firearms Training Academy in Fort Worth, which burned in 2016 and did not reopen, according to the academy.

Authorities have credited two church members with stopping the gunman Sunday, but it was unclear who the second person was.

In his Facebook post, Wilson said he grieved for the two men who were killed.

"I am very sad in the loss of two dear friends and brothers in Christ, but evil does exist in this world and I and other members are not going to allow evil to succeed," he said.

Wilson did not say whether he recognized Kinnunen, who had addresses in White Settlement and River Oaks, according to public records.

Kinnunen was arrested in Fort Worth in 2008 on an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charge. He pleaded guilty to a lesser misdemeanor charge of deadly conduct in 2009 and was sentenced to 90 days in the county jail, records show.

Fort Worth police arrested him again in 2013 on a theft of property charge. He was sentenced to 50 days in jail for that charge in 2014, according to court records.

Further details about the crimes he committed were not available Monday.