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Texas shooting: FBI unable to access mobile phone gunman

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Press Trust of India Houston
The FBI is finding it difficult to access the mobile phone of the gunman who killed 26 worshippers in a shooting rampage in a Texas church, during their probe to gather evidence about his motive, an official has said.

Christopher Combs, the special agent in charge of the agency's San Antonio bureau which is probing the Sutherland Springs church shooting case, said, "We will know more when we are able to explore his phone".

Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, a court-martialled former US Air Force airman, fired hundreds of rounds in the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs on Sunday killing at least 26 people, including an infant and a pregnant woman, in the worst shooting incident in Texas history.
 

The FBI agent also said that with the advancement in the technology, law enforcement agencies are increasingly not being able to get into these phones.

He said that the gunman was not in the FBI's database.

The Air Force had failed to enter Kelley's domestic violence court-martial into a national database that would have barred him from buying weapons.

"With the advance of the technology and the phones and the encryptions, law enforcement whether that's at the state, local or federal level is increasingly not able to get into these phones," he said at a news conference.

He, however, refused to identify the phone manufacturer.

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First Published: Nov 08 2017 | 4:48 PM IST

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