What we know about the Michigan church shot and the criminal fire attack

Investigators are looking for a pattern after a shooter opened fire in a Michigan Mormigan church and set fire to the building, killing four people.

The officials said that the attack on the Church of Jesus Christ of the Holy Studies of Grand White, a city of 60 miles (100 km) northwest of Detroit, occurred during a Sunday service assisted by hundreds of people.

They named the suspect, Thomas Jacob Sanford, 40, from Burton, Michigan, who was killed by police shortly after the shooting.

Speaking at a press conference on Monday, officials said that the incident was an “act of targeted violence”, but said that they had not yet verified the reason for Sanford.

The officials did not appoint the four people who were killed during the shooting, nor the other eight injured, one of which was in critical condition.

Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer urged residents not to speculate on the grounds when the officials conducted their investigation.

“Speculation is useless and can be downright dangerous, so I just ask people to lower the temperature of the rhetoric,” she said.

The shooting started around 10:30 am (3.30 pm BST) on Sunday, when a shooter crushed his vehicle in the building, then started to shoot the faithful.

A man told CBS News that he left the church after hearing a “strong boom” from the vehicle accident, before seeing the suspect start shooting a weapon in the building.

“It was so unexpected,” said the congregator, Paul Kirby. “Once I saw the weapon and I started to hear it start to shoot it, it was just a lot of fear.”

Shortly after, the shooter set fire to the church using petrol or another accelerator, officials said. They also found the suspect’s explosive makeshift devices, said James Deir, an agent from the alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives.

Less than 10 minutes after the shooting, the shooter died during a shooting with the police, officials said.

Investigators said on Monday that they had interviewed more than 100 victims and witnesses as part of the investigation and spent all night to deal with crime.

Although the officials did not give a reason, the press secretary of the White House, Karoline Leavitt, told Fox News that Sanford was “a person who hated people of the Mormone faith”.

Officials said the suspect was a former sailor who was formerly deployed in Iraq.

Sanford told Clarkston News local that he was a sergeant in the Marines and that he had been deployed in Falujah in Iraq in 2007.

“I’m delighted to go,” he told the newspaper. “There are many changes that we make in the Middle East, we are progressing.”

Sanford experienced previous arrests for burglary and led a drunk vehicle, officials announced on Monday.

Little information is available on the suspect’s political convictions, but his Facebook profile presents a photo of him in 2019 bearing what seems to be a shirt promoting the re -election of Donald Trump in 2020.

An image of Google Street View of a property linked to Sanford also seems to show a pro-Trump panel outside the house.

Sanford also seemed to be the father of a son who had serious health problems, according to his family articles and a fundraising page.

Sanford is a suburb of flint of around 30,000 people, a few kilometers from the canton of Grand Blanc.