Southwest
Lakewood Church holds healing and praise service a week after fatal shooting
- Lakewood Church, led by pastor Joel Osteen, held a special healing and thanksgiving service a week after a shooting incident in one of its hallways.
- Osteen, along with his wife and church staff, addressed the impact of the shooting on the community and discussed moving forward with strength.
- The shooting occurred when Genesse Moreno entered the church with her 7-year-old son and began firing an AR-style rifle.
Celebrity pastor Joel Osteen’s Houston megachurch held a special service Sunday dedicated to healing and thanksgiving a week after a woman opened fire in one of its hallways before being gunned down by security officers.
Osteen’s Lakewood Church has not had services since the Feb. 11 shooting that sent worshippers scrambling for safety. On Sunday, Osteen, his wife Victoria Osteen and members of the church staff who lead Lakewood’s Spanish ministry sat in chairs on the stage and spoke about the shooting, how it has impacted Lakewood’s community and how the church was moving forward.
Osteen told parishioners it has been a difficult time with “a lot of trauma.”
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“You just got to know Lakewood is strong and it keeps getting stronger,” he said. “Fear is not going to win. Faith is going to win. We are going to move forward.”
Pastor Joel Osteen prays during a service at Lakewood Church on Feb. 18, 2024, in Houston. Osteen welcomed worshipers back to Lakewood Church for the first time since a woman with an AR-style opened fire in between services at his Texas megachurch last Sunday. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
Church leaders thanked the security staff and others who responded during the shooting and protected parishioners. Osteen invited Houston Mayor John Whitmire and police Chief Troy Finner to the stage and thanked them for their help after the tragedy. Attendees gave officers and security staff a standing ovation.
“After the tragedy of last week, (God) had a purpose in bringing us together to show how united our city is,” Whitmire said during a fiery and emotional speech.
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As Osteen and others spoke, people in the audience could be heard saying, “Amen” and “Thank you, God.”
“What today is about is reclaiming what is ours, reclaiming the space that God has provided for all of us” Victoria Osteen said.
Officers from various law enforcement agencies, including Houston Police, walked the hallways during and between services Sunday.
Church spokesperson Don Iloff said 40 to 50 uniformed and plainclothes officers typically work every church service. He said he did not immediately know if that number was higher Sunday.
Police say Genesse Moreno, 36, entered the church between Sunday services with her 7-year-old son and began firing an AR-style rifle. Moreno did not reach the main sanctuary and was killed after exchanging gunfire with two off-duty officers. Two people were wounded in the shooting, including Moreno’s son, who was shot in the head and remained hospitalized.
Osteen, who wiped away tears as he spoke, said he was praying for the boy.
Moreno “came to do a lot of harm, but by the grace of God, we are all here,” Osteen said. “Lord, I know she was troubled in her mind.”
Jocelyn Edwards, 39, who attended one of the two Sunday morning services, said she felt it was important to be there and support Lakewood.
“This is not the end,” said Edwards, who has attended Lakewood since 2015. “We are not broken. We are going to move forward.”
Beth Mast, 50, was also at Lakewood on Sunday with her husband, two daughters and three sons. The family lives in Crockett, Texas, and every week makes the 1½ hour trip to Houston to attend services. She has been a member of Lakewood for the past four years.
“We come every Sunday, and the enemy is not going to stop us,” Mast said. “Fear is not going to have any power over us just because of a bad incident.”
Vera Andronenkova, 54, and her godson Richard Fijas, 33, who both live in Chicago and usually watch services online, said the shooting was a sign that they needed to finally come to Houston and visit the church.
“A lot of people, they asked us, ‘Aren’t you guys afraid to go?’ We did not let that fear stop us,” Fijas said. “We felt like this was the week to come.”
Finner told reporters after the service that investigators were still trying to determine Moreno’s motive and learn more about how she obtained the AR-style rifle she used.
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, who was also at the service, said investigators “are leaning toward her being more mentally ill and this being a situation of a lone wolf.”
Moreno’s former mother-in-law, Walli Carranza, told The Associated Press that Moreno had long struggled with mental illness. Carranza said she believed systemic failures and lax gun laws ultimately led to the shooting.
She also said she tried to alert authorities and others about Moreno’s mental health struggles, and that in 2020 and 2021, her attorney sent emails to Lakewood Church asking for assistance.
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Church officials had not found records of the emails, but they were still looking, Iloff said. Records show Moreno “sporadically” attended services at Lakewood for a couple of years, but there were no records of her being at the church after 2022, Iloff said last week.
Texas lacks a so-called “red flag” law, which generally allows law enforcement or family members to ask a judge to order the seizure or surrender of guns from someone who is deemed dangerous, often because of mental health concerns or threats of violence.
Osteen, 60, preaches to about 45,000 people a week at the church located in a former basketball arena, and he is known to millions more through his televised sermons. Lakewood is the third-largest megachurch in the U.S., according to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.
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Southwest
Savannah Guthrie spotted in NYC as search for missing mother enters sixth week with few answers
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TUCSON, Ariz. — “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie is back in New York City as the search for her missing mother enters its sixth week with little publicly known progress in her hometown of Tucson, Arizona.
Guthrie was photographed in public for the first time since her mother’s suspected abduction, alongside husband Mike Feldman and their young son in the Big Apple Sunday, days after an emotional reunion with her NBC colleagues and more than a month after her 84-year-old mother Nancy was last seen.
Nancy’s disappearance shocked the country — especially when the FBI released disturbing surveillance video of a masked man on her doorstep.
Savannah Guthrie spent weeks in Tucson with her siblings as the investigation played out — before she and her older sister, Annie, added bouquets of yellow flowers to a growing display at the foot of their mother’s driveway. She quietly flew home to New York last week.
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Savannah Guthrie is seen out in New York with her husband Michael Feldman as the “Today” show anchor makes her first public appearance more than five weeks after the suspected abduction of her mother, Nancy Guthrie. (ASPN / BACKGRID)
Sunday marked five weeks since the suspected kidnapping.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department is leading the investigation, which is now being overseen by a task force consisting of local detectives and FBI agents.
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Savannah Guthrie visits the Today show at Rockefeller Plaza in New York on Thursday, March 5, 2026. (Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)
No suspects have been publicly identified.
A masked man who appeared on Nancy Guthrie’s Nest doorbell camera around the time authorities said she was taken is described as being of average height and build and carrying a black Ozark Trail backpack.
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Savannah Guthrie and her mother, Nancy Guthrie, are pictured Thursday, June 15, 2023. (Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty Images)
He appeared to be armed with a handgun as well. Law enforcement sources said he visited Nancy Guthrie’s home at least once in advance of her disappearance, wearing a similar disguise.
Other identifying details are scarce.
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The use of cadaver dogs is also on hold, according to authorities, who re-canvassed Nancy Guthrie’s neighborhood as recently as last week.
When asked if that meant they believed she is still alive, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos declined to discuss evidence in the case.
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“Anything is possible,” he told Fox News Digital.
Authorities have said they won’t consider the case cold until they run out of viable leads to follow up on — and tens of thousands have come in so far.
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There’s a reward of more than $1.2 million in play for information that leads to Nancy’s recovery.
Savannah Guthrie has asked anyone with information to dial 1-800-CALL-FBI.
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Southwest
FBI subpoenas 2020 Arizona voting docs as federal push into election administration widens
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An Arizona state lawmaker revealed Monday that federal authorities subpoenaed him for records related to the 2020 election, marking the second publicly confirmed jurisdiction the Department of Justice is investigating over the matter.
Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, a Republican, said in a social media post he received the subpoena for material related to the state Senate’s 2020 audit last week and complied with it.
“Late last week I received and complied with a federal grand jury subpoena for records relating to the Arizona State Senate’s 2020 audit of Maricopa County,” Petersen wrote. “The FBI has the records. Any other report is fake news.”
The request represents an expansion of a federal probe tied to 2020 after the DOJ initially targeted Fulton County, Georgia. The development also comes as President Donald Trump has grown increasingly outspoken about election security in the lead-up to the 2026 midterms, renewing his attention on disputes stemming from the last presidential race.
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An election worker removes a ballot from an envelope to count and inspect the pages inside the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center (MCTEC) on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona. (PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
Petersen made the revelation after President Donald Trump shared a Just the News report about the subpoena on Truth Social, writing, “Great!!! FBI secretly seizes election records from Arizona’s largest county as voting probe expands.”
Multiple U.S. officials confirmed the election probe to Fox News, saying the DOJ is looking at a large tranche of Arizona data from 2020 and 2024.
President Donald Trump listens during an event about the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, in the Indian Treaty Room of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex, Wednesday, March 4, 2026, in Washington. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo)
The White House directed Fox News Digital to the FBI on Monday when asked for comment. The FBI declined to comment.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, an elected Democrat, said the new investigation was based on claims that courts and state investigators have proven wrong.
“What the Trump administration appears to be pursuing now is not a legitimate law enforcement inquiry,” Mayes said in a statement. “It is the weaponization of federal law enforcement in service of crackpots and lies.”
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Attendees listen as Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) speaks at an “Only Citizens Vote” bus tour rally advocating passage of the SAVE Act at Upper Senate Park outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, on Sept. 10, 2025. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
The subpoena comes as the president increasingly focuses on election security ahead of the 2026 midterms, telling Congress in a social media post on Sunday that he will not sign any legislation into law until it passes the SAVE America Act.
The bill’s primary purpose is to require voters nationwide to show physical identification to prove citizenship to vote in federal elections. The version of the bill Trump is pushing would also ban mail-in ballots except for the military and in other extenuating circumstances.
Maricopa, Arizona’s most populous county, was a hotbed for accusations of voter fraud in 2020. Fulton County, Georgia, faced similar accusations, with the DOJ launching a separate investigation into the 2020 election earlier this year.
Trump lost Arizona in 2020 by about 0.3 percentage points. The president refused to concede, and his legal team brought a series of lawsuits alleging vote-counting irregularities, but none were successful.
Fox News’ David Spunt and Jake Gibson contributed to this report.
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Southwest
Wisconsin man who fled Border Patrol checkpoint in stolen car killed after shootout in Texas, police say
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FIRST ON FOX: A Wisconsin man driving a stolen vehicle was killed Wednesday after he fled through a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint and led authorities on a vehicle chase and shootout in Texas.
The incident happened at around 10:30 a.m. at the Sierra Blanca checkpoint in the Big Bend Sector between El Paso and Van Horn, a remote area.
James Douglas McMillan, 33, of Greenfield, Wis., took off from the checkpoint after a Border Patrol drug K-9 alerted to the vehicle and agents directed McMillan to pull over for a secondary search, the Texas Department of Public Safety said.
A migrant walks through the Rio Grande as he crosses the U.S.-Mexico border, March 13, 2024, in El Paso, Texas. On Wednesday, a man was shot and killed by authorities near El Paso after fleeing through a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint. (John Moore/Getty Images)
During the car chase, McMillan opened fire out of his vehicle window at DPS troopers and other authorities from several law enforcement agencies and civilian vehicles, DPS said.
“As law enforcement returned fire, DPS Troopers performed a precision immobilization technique (PIT) maneuver and successfully stopped the suspect vehicle,” a DPS statement said.
McMillan barricaded himself in his vehicle and eventually pointed his weapon towards officers, prompting officers to open fire, authorities said.
He was shot and killed. No law enforcement officers or civilians were hurt.
Investigators determined McMillan was driving a vehicle reported stolen in Arizona. The shooting is being investigated by the Texas Rangers, with assistance from the FBI and USBP.
The shooting involved Border Patrol agents and DPS troopers. (Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images)
In January, a man suspected of smuggling illegal immigrants was shot by federal officers during a gunfire exchange in Arizona.
Patrick Gary Schlegel, 34, fled from authorities on foot and allegedly shot at a CBP helicopter and at agents, Heith Janke, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Phoenix Division, said at the time.
A U.S. Border Patrol officer watches a USBP helicopter. (Herika Martinez/AFP via Getty Images)
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Schlegal, a U.S. citizen from Arizona, underwent surgery and survived. No one else was harmed, authorities said.
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