Police call Louisville shooting a hate crime

Gregory Alan Bush, 51, is in the shooting deaths of Maurice Stallard, 69, and Vickie Lee Jones, 67. Bush is white; Stallard and Jones were black.

Here are the latest updates on the Kroger shooting in Louisville.

Police call Kroger shooting a hate crime

Jeffersontown Police Chief Sam Rogers told the congregation at First Baptist Church on Sunday that the shooting was motivated by racism. He called it "the elephant in the room that some do not want to acknowledge in this case" and said it needed to be addressed as part of a larger dialogue.

"Rogers said, noting the alleged shooter told one man" whites do not kill whites " before his capture.

Oct 25: Questions about swirling about Kentucky Kroger store

Jeffersontown Mayor Bill Dieruf struck a similar note.

"Yes, it is real," he said, arguing his city should not be defined by one person's actions. "It's up to us to solve the problem of racism."

According to police, Bush tried to break into First Baptist, predominately African-American church, just 10 to 15 minutes before the shooting.

Black Lives Matter calls out public officials

The Kroger shooting Wednesday was followed by a mass shooting Saturday at the Tree of Life Congregation Synagogue in Pittsburgh. The alleged shooter, identified as Robert Bowers, killed 11 people.

Shortly after the shooting, the Pittsburgh public safety director told reporters that the incident was being investigated as a crime. That was not the case in Louisville.

Criticism came from Louisville's black leaders on Sunday because of some of the city's most prominent politicians have not decried the possible racial motivations.

"It was also an act of terrorism," said Truman Harris with Louisville's Black Lives Matter Group. "It's ridiculous that Mayor Fischer, that Matt Bevin, that Mitch McConnell are taking long as they're in it." "If this person was a black or brown terrorist, it would have been acknowledged right then and there."

U.S. Attorney Russell Coleman said last week that federal investigators are "considering this matter from the perspective of federal criminal law, which includes potential civil rights violations such as hate crimes."

Oct 24: Police: 2 people dead in Kroger store in Kentucky; suspect in custody

On Monday, McConnell denounced the Kentucky shooting as hate crime.

Speaking to a gathering of the conservative Federalist Society in Kentucky, McConnell began by commenting on the "horrendous" shootings in Pittsburgh and Louisville.

"If these are not the definitions of hate crimes, I do not know what hate crime is," the senator said Monday in his speech at Kentucky's Capitol in Frankfurt. "I know that's a legal determination to be made by others, but that's definitely my opinion."

McConnell also advocates for the death penalty to be applied.

Gregory Bush remains on a million dollar bond

Currently Bush is still in Metro Corrections on $ 5 million bond. He is scheduled to appear back in court Nov. 5.

Court records show that Bush has a history of mental health problems and violence when he used a racial slur.

In 2001, Bush's ex-wife, who is black, sought an emergency protection order against Bush after he allegedly yelled threats at her and twice called her "(N-word) bitch." A judge barred Bush from having or buying guns, which was effective for three years.

And in a 2009 domestic violence case involving his father, Bush was ordered by a judge to surrender his guns and mental health treatment.

Bush's father seeks to protect himself from the dead. He had been threatening to shoot his parents, with whom he lived, in the days leading up to the January 2009 assault.

In short filings, Bush identified himself as having schizoaffective disorder, and his ex-wife also identified him as a paranoid.

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Courier Journal reporter Thomas Novelly narrates a timeline of events.
Jeff Faughender, Louisville Courier Journal

'You've gotta sing through your tears some days''

On Sunday, at St. Bartholomew Church in Buechel and the Church of the Living God in Russell, congressmen mourned the deaths of Stallard and Jones.

They tried to grapple with tough questions, but they had to be killed in an act of senseless violence.

After various Bible readings, the Rev. Nick Brown in Buechel said: "Why do bad things happen?"

"The difficult answer to that question is, of course, that God really chooses not to give us an answer to it," Brown said. "There is no answer in our scripture or in our church teaching. There is no answer to why bad things happen, we just know that it does. "

Patricia Fulce-Smith, the wife of the minister at the Church of the Living God in Russell, and two other women sang "God wants to heal you everywhere you hurt."

Fulce-Smith faltered, choking up.

"You've gotta sing by," she said.