White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, speaking on Fox News Channel’s Fox and Friends, said the FBI was learning that Sanford had a religious bias against the Mormon faith.
“All they know right now is this was an individual who hated people of the Mormon faith, and they are trying to understand more about this, how premeditated it was, how much planning went into it, whether he left a note,” she said.
Sanford’s animosity towards the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stemmed from his break-up with a deeply religious girlfriend of the Mormon faith more than a decade ago, The New York Times reported, citing two lifelong friends and other people who knew him.
Genesee County prosecutor David Leyton said his office wrote warrants to search Sanford’s vehicles, home and electronic devices to try to discover his motives.
“All this takes time,” he told The Associated Press.
The suspect is alleged to have opened fire on members of the church before setting it ablaze.Credit: AP
Coincidentally, Sanford and his family lived next to a church, Eastgate Baptist, in Burton. Pastor Jerome Taylor said he mostly talked to Sanford about fallen trees on church property that his neighbour wanted to cut and sell as firewood.
“He had free rein,” said Taylor, who described Sanford as a “general blue-collar person in our neighbourhood”.
“The knowledge that there was a threat, a danger, across our property line is so heinous — it’s a little bit mind-warping,” he said, adding that Sanford never attended Eastgate Baptist.
A family friend, Kara Pattison, said she saw Sanford on Friday, two days before the shooting. She and her daughter were walking in the street at the Goodrich High School homecoming parade and became startled when the driver of a ute hit the gas pedal hard.
A Michigan state trooper with a robot near the home of the suspect.Credit: AP
When the window was rolled down, it was Sanford “laughing”, Pattison said.
“How do you mourn the death of someone who did something so terrible?” Pattison told WDIV-TV, referring to the church attack.
After high school, Sanford served in the Marines from 2004 to 2008, including seven months in Iraq, focusing on vehicle operations and maintenance, records show. He was discharged at the rank of sergeant.
Under Michigan law, police, family or health professionals can ask a judge to take guns away from someone for reasons that include mental health. There were no petitions filed against Sanford, court administrator Barbara Menear said.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, based in Utah, follows the teachings of Jesus but also the prophecies of Joseph Smith, a 19th-century American who published the faith’s earliest religious text, the Book of Mormon in 1830.
AP, Reuters
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