FBI Seeks To Unlock Texas Shooter's IPhone

Image copyright KSAT 12 / Reuters

Apple has offered to help the FBI unlock the phone of Devin Kelley.

The former soldier shot dead 26 people and wounded 20 more at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, in Texas, on Sunday and was later found dead in his vehicle, some miles away.

The FBI then released a statement saying his smartphone had been sent to its central crime lab, in Virginia, as local police could not unlock it.

And Apple has now said it "immediately" offered to help.

The company said it worked with law enforcement agencies every day and had trained "thousands" of officers about the best way to handle its devices and how to request information.

If Kelley had saved his phone data on Apple's iCloud service, this too may hold information about numbers called, messages sent and pictures it was used to take.

Dead man's finger

"It actually highlights an issue that you've all heard about before, the advance of the technology and the phones and the encryptions," said FBI special agent Christopher Combs.

"Law enforcement, whether at the state or local or the federal level, is increasingly not able to get into these phones."

However, there has been speculation the FBI may have missed an early chance to get at data on Kelley's phone.

Apple iPhones locked with a fingerprint ask for a passcode only after they have not been unlocked for a 48-hour period.

And it is therefore possible the phone could have been unlocked by the dead man's finger in the hours after his death, provided it had not run out of battery, or been deliberately switched off or rebooted.