Law enforcement officials work the scene of a fatal shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Sunday, Nov. 5, 2017. (Nick Wagner/Austin American-Statesman via AP) (Associated Press) 
 
 Law enforcement officials work the scene of a fatal shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Sunday, Nov. 5, 2017. (Nick Wagner/Austin American-Statesman via AP) (Associated Press) 
 
 SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas (AP) — A man dressed in black tactical-style gear and armed with an assault rifle opened fire inside a church in a small South Texas community on Sunday, killing 26 people and wounding about 20 in what the governor called the deadliest mass shooting in the state's history. The dead ranged in age from 5 to 72 years old. 
 
 Authorities didn't identify the attacker during a news conference Sunday night, but two other officials — one a U.S. official and one in law enforcement — identified him as Devin Kelley. They spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the investigation. 
 
 The U.S. official said Kelley lived in a San Antonio suburb and didn't appear to be linked to organized terrorist groups. Investigators were looking at social media posts Kelley made in the days before Sunday's attack, including one that appeared to show an AR-15 semiautomatic weapon. 
 
 An Air Force spokeswoman said Sunday night that Devin P. Kelley received a bad-conduct discharge from the Air Force for allegedly assaulting his spouse and child, and was sentenced to 12 months' confinement after a 2012 court-martial. Kelley served in Logistics Readiness at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico from 2010 until his discharge, spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said. 
 
 At the news conference, the attacker was described only as a white man in his 20s who was wearing black tactical gear and a ballistic vest when he pulled into a gas station across from the First Baptist Church around 11:20 a.m. 
 
 The gunman crossed the street and started firing a Ruger AR rifle at the church, said Freeman Martin, a regional director of the Texas Department of Safety, then continued firing after entering the white wood-frame building, where an 11 a.m. service was scheduled. As he left, the shooter was confronted by an armed resident who "grabbed his rifle and engaged that suspect," Martin said. A short time later, the suspect was found dead in his vehicle at the county line. 
 
 Several weapons were found inside the vehicle and Martin said it was unclear if the attacker died of a self-inflicted wound or if he was shot by the resident who confronted him. He said investigators weren't ready to discuss a possible motive. Martin said 23 of the dead were found in the church, two were found outside and one died after being taken to a hospital. 
 
 Addressing the news conference, Gov. Greg Abbott called the attack the worst mass shooting in Texas history. 
 
 "There are no words to describe the pure evil that we witnessed in Sutherland Springs today," Abbott said. "Our hearts are heavy at the anguish in this small town, but in time of tragedy, we see the very best of Texas. May God comfort those who've lost a loved one, and may God heal the hurt in our communities." 
 
 Among those killed was the church pastor's 14-year-old daughter, Annabelle Pomeroy. Pastor Frank Pomeroy, and his wife, Sherri, were both out of town in two different states when the attack occurred, Sherri Pomeroy wrote in a text message to the AP. 
 
 "We lost our 14-year-old daughter today and many friends," she wrote. "Neither of us has made it back into town yet to personally see the devastation. I am at the charlotte airport trying to get home as soon as i can." 
 
 Federal law enforcement swarmed the small rural community of a few hundred residents 30 miles southeast of San Antonio after the attack, including ATF investigators and members of the FBI's evidence collection team. 
 
 At least 16 wounded were taken to hospitals, hospital officials said, including eight taken by medical helicopter to the Brooke Army Medical Center. Another eight victims were taken to Connally Memorial Medical Center, located in Floresville about 10 miles from the church, including four who were later transferred to University Hospital in San Antonio for higher-level care, said spokeswoman Megan Posey. 
 
 Hunter Green, 16, normally attends the church with his girlfriend but they skipped Sunday after a late date night. Attending a candlelight vigil hours later, he described the building as having only small exits on the side and in the back that would have made it very difficult to flee a shooter entering the front door. 
 
 "They wouldn't have had anywhere to go," Green said. 
 
 Alena Berlanga, a Floresville resident who was monitoring the chaos on a police scanner and in Facebook community groups, said everyone knows everyone else in the sparsely populated county. 
 
 "This is horrific for our tiny little tight-knit town," Berlanga said. "Everybody's going to be affected and everybody knows someone who's affected." 
 
 Regina Rodriguez, who arrived at the church a couple of hours after the shooting, walked up to the police barricade and hugged a person she was with. She said her father, 51-year-old Richard Rodriguez, attends the church every Sunday, and she hadn't been able to reach him. She said she feared the worst. 
 
 Church member Nick Uhlig, 34, wasn't at Sunday's service, but he said his cousins were at the church and that his family was told at least one of them, a woman with three children and pregnant with another, was among the dead. 
 
 "We just gathered to bury their grandfather on Thursday," he said, shaking his head. "This is the only church here. We have Bible study, men's Bible study, vacation Bible school. Somebody went in and started shooting." 
 
 President Donald Trump, who was in Japan, called the shooting an "act of evil" and said he was monitoring the situation. 
 
 "We're shocked. Shocked and dismayed," said state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, a Laredo Democrat whose district includes Sutherland Springs, a rural community known for its peanut festival, which was held last month. "It's especially shocking when it's such a small, serene area. These rural areas, they are so beautiful and so loving." 
 
 Later Sunday, two sheriff's vans were parked outside the gate of a cattle fence surrounding the address listed for Kelley on the rural, western outskirts of New Braunfels, north of San Antonio, preventing a group of waiting journalists from entering. Officials from the Comal County Sherriff's Office and the Texas Rangers declined to comment or say if they had raided his home. 
 
 Ryan Albers, 16, who lives across the road said he heard intensifying gunfire coming from that direction in recent days. 
 
 "It had to be coming from somewhere pretty close," Albers said. "It was definitely not just a shotgun or someone hunting. It was someone using automatic weapon fire." 
 
 The church has posted videos of its Sunday services on a YouTube channel, raising the possibility that the shooting was captured on video. 
 
 In a video of its Oct. 8 service, a congregant who spoke and read Scripture pointed to the Oct. 1 Las Vegas shooting a week earlier as evidence of the "wicked nature" of man. That shooting left 58 dead and more than 500 injured. 
 
 Until Sunday, the deadliest mass shooting in Texas had been a 1991 attack in Killeen, when a mentally disturbed man crashed his pickup truck through a restaurant window at lunchtime and started shooting people, killing 23 and injuring more than 20 others. 
 
 The University of Texas was the site of one of the most infamous mass shootings in American history, when U.S. Marine sniper Charles Whitman climbed the Austin campus' clock tower in 1966 and began firing on stunned people below, killing 13 and wounding nearly three dozen others. He had killed his wife and mother before heading to the tower, one victim died a week later and medical examiners eventually attributed a 17th death to Whitman in 2001. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers Sadie Gurman and Eric Tucker in Washington, Nomaan Merchant in Houston, Will Weissert in Austin, Diana Heidgerd in Dallas, Michael Balsamo in Los Angeles and Paul J. Weber in New Braunfels, Texas, contributed to this report. ||||| (CNN) At least 26 people were killed in Sunday's church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott said at a press conference. 
 
 About 20 others were wounded, said Freeman Martin, a regional director with the Texas Department of Public Safety, with victims ranging in age from 5 to 72 years old. 
 
 Among the dead is the 14-year-old daughter of the First Baptist Church's pastor, Frank Pomeroy, according to his wife, Sherri Pomeroy, the girl's mother. The couple were traveling out of state when the shooting occurred. 
 
 Authorities have not said what may have motivated the suspected shooter, who was later found dead in his vehicle. 
 
 The shooting has devastated the small Texas town east of San Antonio, described as a place where "everybody knows everybody." 
 
 Here are the latest developments: 
 
 The suspected shooter has been identified as 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley, according to two law enforcement sources who have been briefed on the investigation. 
 
 In April 2016, Kelley purchased the Ruger AR-556 rifle he used in the shooting from an Academy Sports & Outdoors store in San Antonio, Texas, a law enforcement official said. He indicated he didn't have a disqualifying criminal history when he filled out the background check paperwork at the store, the official said. Kelley listed a Colorado Springs, Colorado, address when he bought the gun. 
 
 Kelley was a member of the US Air Force and served at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico from 2010 until his discharge, according to Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek. 
 
 Kelley was court-martialed in 2012 for assault on his spouse and assault on their child, according to Stefanek. Kelley served a year in prison and received a bad conduct discharge in 2014, the spokeswoman said. His rank was also reduced, she said. 
 
 Speaking from Japan, President Donald Trump condemned the shooting as an "act of evil" and called it "horrific." 
 
 "We don't know names of any of the victims at this time," said Wilson County Sheriff Joe Tackitt in a press conference Sunday evening. As victims are identified, next of kin will be notified, he said. 
 
 The attack 
 
 Without naming Kelley, Martin described the shooter in Sunday's press conference as a young white male who was dressed in all-black "tactical-type gear" and wearing a ballistic vest. 
 
 Martin said the suspect was seen in a Valero gas station across the street from the church in Sutherland Springs at about 11:20 a.m. local time on Sunday morning. 
 
 The suspect left the gas station, crossed the street, exited his vehicle and began firing before he entered the church, Martin said. 
 
 As the suspected shooter left the church, a local resident used their own rifle to engage him, Martin said. The shooter then fled the church, while the citizen pursued him. 
 
 After a brief chase, law enforcement later found the suspect dead of a gunshot wound inside his vehicle. A law enforcement official briefed on the investigation said multiple weapons were found in Kelley's car. Authorities said they don't know if the wound was self-inflicted or the result of the resident who fired on the suspect, Martin said. 
 
 The shooter was killed after a brief chase north into neighboring Guadalupe County, Guadalupe County Sheriff's Office spokesman Robert Murphy said earlier on Sunday. 
 
 The community 
 
 Sutherland Springs is in Wilson County, about 30 miles east of San Antonio. 
 
 "My heart is broken," Wilson County Commissioner Albert Gamez Jr. told CNN. "We never think where it can happen, and it does happen. It doesn't matter where you're at. In a small community, real quiet and everything, and look at this." 
 
 Dana Fletcher, who owns a business down the road from the church, told CNN's Fredricka Whitfield that Sutherland Springs is a "very small" but "very tight-knit community." 
 
 "There's two gas stations, the church, a community center, post office, a Dollar General, a tire shop," she said. "That's about it." 
 
 The FBI was on the scene of the shooting, according to Michelle Lee, spokeswoman for the FBI's San Antonio field office. Agents from the San Antonio field office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also headed to the scene, a law enforcement source said. 
 
 After the shooting, about 100 family members of victims gathered in a community center next to the church, waiting for news of their loved ones, 26-year-old David Flores told CNN. Local law enforcement, the FBI and the Red Cross were also at the community center. 
 
 "My dad saw the gunman run into the church building and then he heard shots and saw people running," Flores told CNN. "People covered in blood and screaming. It was pandemonium everywhere." 
 
 "Looking around, it's very sorrowful and the pastors from all the local churches right now are just trying to console everybody," said Flores when asked to describe the scene inside the community center. 
 
 "There were several children injured," he said. "I know three, personally, who are in critical condition." 
 
 The victims 
 
 The Connally Memorial Medical Center in nearby Floresville, Texas, received 8 patients with gunshot wounds from the Sutherland Springs church shooting, a statement from the hospital said. Four of those patients were transferred to University Hospital in San Antonio to receive a higher level of care. 
 
 One of those patients was in critical condition and needed to be air-lifted. 
 
 Three patients were treated at Connally Memorial Medical Center and have been released, the statement said. One patient is in stable condition there. 
 
 Photos: Sutherland Springs church shooting Investigators work at the scene of a mass shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Sunday, November 5. A man opened fire inside the small community church, killing at least 26 people. Hide Caption 1 of 15 Photos: Sutherland Springs church shooting People comfort each other at a community center near the scene of the deadly shooting. Hide Caption 2 of 15 Photos: Sutherland Springs church shooting Investigators work at the scene. Victims range in age from 17 months to 77 years old. 
 
 Hide Caption 3 of 15 Photos: Sutherland Springs church shooting Enrique and Gabby Garcia watch investigators at the scene. Hide Caption 4 of 15 Photos: Sutherland Springs church shooting Law enforcement officials gather near the First Baptist Church. The shooter was killed after a brief chase north into neighboring Guadalupe County, according Guadalupe County Sheriff's Office spokesman Robert Murphy. Hide Caption 5 of 15 Photos: Sutherland Springs church shooting A man wipes his eyes after the shooting. Hide Caption 6 of 15 Photos: Sutherland Springs church shooting Flags are lowered to half staff at First Baptist Church following the shooting. Hide Caption 7 of 15 Photos: Sutherland Springs church shooting Law enforcement officials and forensic experts gather at the scene. Hide Caption 8 of 15 Photos: Sutherland Springs church shooting Emergency personnel seal off the scene of the mass shooting. Hide Caption 9 of 15 Photos: Sutherland Springs church shooting Law enforcement officers man a barricade near the church. Hide Caption 10 of 15 Photos: Sutherland Springs church shooting Carrie Matula embraces a woman after the shooting. Matula said she heard the shooting from the gas station where she works across the street. Hide Caption 11 of 15 Photos: Sutherland Springs church shooting Law enforcement officials work the shooting scene. Hide Caption 12 of 15 Photos: Sutherland Springs church shooting A woman prays with a man after the shooting. Hide Caption 13 of 15 Photos: Sutherland Springs church shooting The FBI responded to the scene of the shooting, according to Michelle Lee, spokeswoman for the FBI's San Antonio field office. Hide Caption 14 of 15 Photos: Sutherland Springs church shooting "My heart is broken," said Wilson County Commissioner Albert Gamez Jr. "We never think where it can happen, and it does happen. It doesn't matter where you're at. In a small community, real quiet and everything, and look at this, what can happen." Hide Caption 15 of 15 
 
 At least 8 patients were being treated Sunday afternoon at University Hospital in San Antonio, according to spokeswoman Leni Kirkman, adding that the hospital could receive more patients. 
 
 A spokesman for Brooke Army Medical Center also confirmed to CNN that the facility received patients from the shooting, but the spokesman didn't have a specific number. 
 
 The church 
 
 According to the church's website, congregants meet around 9:15 a.m. on Sundays for breakfast before Sunday school and the morning church service at 11 a.m. The sanctuary where the shooting occurred is small, with wooden pews and red carpeting. 
 
 Last Sunday, a small praise team led the congregation in a rendition of "Happiness is the Lord," according to a video of the service posted on the church's Facebook page. 
 
 Later in the service, Pastor Pomeroy read scripture from Proverbs: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." 
 
 "Lean on the Lord ... leaning into God is the way we should go," he said, "because God's got it figured out whether we do or not." 
 
 Photos on the church's page show happy moments in the lives of parishioners: children playing in an inflatable castle and adults and children dressed in costumes during last week's Fall Festival, held on Halloween. 
 
 Mourners gathered at a vigil Sunday night at the Sutherland Springs post office. 
 
 "We have never had this happen before," said Debra Morales, a volunteer coordinating relief efforts for victims' family members. "It's all just very upsetting." 
 
 The reaction 
 
 "May God be w/ the people of Sutherland Springs, Texas," tweeted President Donald Trump, who is in Japan on his first trip to Asia as president. 
 
 May God be w/ the people of Sutherland Springs, Texas. The FBI & law enforcement are on the scene. I am monitoring the situation from Japan. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 5, 2017 
 
 Trump was briefed on the shooting, according to White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, and has spoken with Abbott, the Texas governor. 
 
 "In tragic times Americans always pull together," Trump said during a news conference in Japan. "We are always strongest when we are unified." 
 
 US Senator John Cornyn of Texas called the news "truly heartbreaking" in a tweet Sunday . "Please say a prayer for First Baptist congregation, first responders & the community there," he said. 
 
 "While the details of this horrific act are still under investigation, Cecilia and I want to send our sincerest thoughts and prayers to all those who have been affected by this evil act," said Gov. Abbott in a statement Sunday. "I want to thank law enforcement for their response and ask that all Texans pray for the Sutherland Springs community during this time of mourning and loss."
– The death toll in Sunday's mass shooting at a Texas church has risen to 26 and while officials haven't publicly named the gunman yet, law enforcement sources tell the AP that the shooter was Devin Patrick Kelley, a 26-year-old man who lived on the outskirts of the San Antonio suburb of New Braunfels, around 35 miles away from the church in Sutherland Springs. An Air Force spokeswoman says Kelly received a bad-conduct discharge in 2014. He was court-martialed in 2012 and spent a year in confinement after allegedly assaulting his wife and child. The latest developments: Pursued by an armed resident. In a press conference Sunday night, Texas Department of Public Safety regional director Freeman Martin said the gunman attacked the church around 11:20am dressed in black "tactical-type gear," CNN reports. Martin said after the massacre, an armed citizen engaged the suspect and then pursued his vehicle. He said after a chase, the gunman was found dead in his vehicle. It's not clear whether the suspect shot himself or was fatally shot by the citizen.