SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas Heres how it begins.

On a Saturday night in 2014, 18-year-old Danielle Shields sent a friend a series of panicked texts. Her boyfriend, Devin Patrick Kelley, was abusing her, she wrote. Her arms were red. He told her to pack a bag. When the texts abruptly stopped, her friend called the cops. They went to Shields house, but closed the report a half hour later. The incident was simply a misunderstanding and teenage drama, they wrote.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Two months later, the couple married. Wedding bells and cake. New beginnings. Three years passed. Then, on a sleepy Sunday morning, heres how it ends.

On Nov. 5, Kelley pulled up at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, ready to execute a gruesome plan.

It was an unexpected location for a mass shooting a modest little worship hall in a tiny town in rural South Texas but it wasnt chosen at random. The church represented something to Danielle and her family, something good and pure. His wife used to worship there as a child. In the church directory, theres an undated photo of her alongside her mother, Michelle, flashing a broad smile. Both her mother and grandmother attended services at the church.

He was going to desecrate it.

That morning, Kelley ambushed First Baptist wearing all black, armed with a Ruger AR-556 rifle. He sprayed the small sanctuary with bullets for seven eternal minutes, slaying congregants in the very pews they prayed in. He methodically shot victims in the head, even crying children. The whole ghastly event was unintentionally caught on camera, as the church regularly recorded its weekly sermons to post on YouTube.

By the time the gunfire ceased, 26 people were dead, including the unborn child of a pregnant parishioner. Twenty others were wounded, traumatized. The community was split wide open. Among the victims: A 16-year-old girl whose faith carried her through the loss of her father. Nine members of the same family . A middle-aged pair of high school sweethearts . The pastors teenage daughter . And Kelleys grandmother-in-law , who was a church volunteer. Kelley shot himself afterward.

Twenty-six lives were gone in the deadliest mass shooting in modern Texas history. There was no making sense of it. But what would make a person do such a thing?