‘Why wouldn’t you want to take him down?’: Johnnie Langendorff recounts racing after Texas church shooter

Langendorff said he had been driving past the church on the way to his girlfriend’s house around 11:30 a.m. Sunday when he heard the shooting.

“I saw the shooter coming from the cars actually right outside the church that were parked. His vehicle was parked, door opened, engine running and him and the neighbor across the street were both coming out about the same time exchanging fire,” Langendorff told Fox News.

“The shooter got in his truck and the gentleman with the rifle came to my truck as the shooter took off and he briefed me quickly on what had just happened and said we had to get him and so that’s what I did. We just take pursuit,” he added.

Langendorff and the other man, who has not been identified, sped up to 95 mph in pursuit of the shooter.

“We hit about 95 going down 539 trying to catch this guy until he eventually lost control on his own and went off in a ditch,” he added.

The two traveled approximately 11 miles from Wilson County to Guadalupe County, where the chase ended.

Police who responded to the scene said Kelley was found dead in his car with a gunshot wound to the head. Police have not shared if Kelley shot himself or was shot by the responding citizens.

Local police arrived five to seven minutes after the crash. Langendorff is being hailed as a hero, but shrugged off the praise in a Facebook post Sunday that has since been made private, “I was trying to get him, to get him apprehended. It was strictly just acting on what the right thing to do was.”

The 26 people killed in the attack ranged from five years old to 72 years old, according to Freeman Martin, a regional director with the Texas Department of Public Safety.