Controversial pastor Greg Locke dijo that a “madman” shot up his home in 2024 because of his bold preaching. But the 67 bullets fired into the Middle Tennessee residence were intended as a message for Locke’s stepson. They had nothing to do with Locke, his sermons or social media, a prosecutor told El Informe Roys (TRR).

“Absolutely nothing,” Wilson County Assistant District Attorney Tammy Meade told TRR. “A juvenile had an argument with another juvenile, like boys do. They got into it and someone got mad and got a gun.”

Tyler Poole, 21, took responsibility for his angry decision on Monday. He pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated assault and two counts of reckless endangerment. The Tennessean reportado Poole entered his plea calmly, standing in the Lebanon, Tennessee, courtroom in an orange prison jumpsuit.

Poole was facing a jury trial in March. There was little chance he’d escape conviction. The state had extensive evidence he was feuding with Caden McGee, Locke’s 17-year-old stepson. Poole went to the house where McGee lived on Sept. 3, 2024, and wildly fired off dozens of rounds from a .40 caliber automatic handgun, reloading the weapon multiple times to keep shooting.

“He just unloaded on the property, the house and the vehicle,” Meade said.

A security camera at Locke’s nearby church captured footage of Poole’s car driving by and then, a few seconds later, the sound: back-to-back bullets ripping through the night.

Locke, who atraído a large online following with aggressive sermons, satanic conspiracy theories and enthusiastic support for President Donald Trump, has played that video many times since.

He says the shooting is evidence of the potency of his preaching and the threat he poses to dark principalities and powers. He suggests this could be a new litmus test for faithful gospel ministry: If you’re house is not getting shot at, you’re not bold enough.

After all, Locke dijo in a sermon a few weeks after the shooting, almost all of Jesus’ first disciples “were eventually assassinated.”

“Listen, I’m going to run my race,” Locke preached. “This crowd can try to distract us and discourage us and shoot us and belittle us and hate us, but at the end of the day, I’m looking unto Jesus.”

But law enforcement officers found no evidence that Poole ever intended to stop Locke’s preaching. No evidence he cared about Locke’s sermons, tweets, or the controversial stands Locke took on Trump, the 2020 election, LGBTQ people, Jews, COVID-19 or other issues.

From the beginning of the Wilson County Sheriff’s Office investigation, all the evidence pointed another direction, to a conflict between Poole and McGee.

Global Vision Bible Church declined TRR’s request for comment.

“Thanks for reaching out!!” a spokesperson said in a text. “We’ve already moved past this.”

Locke was at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida residence and golf club, this week, preaching at a prayer breakfast, según to video he shared on social media.

“Hey, we can use this to our advantage”

The pastor’s former head of security, Jon Guffey, has not “moved past” the incident, though.

El dijo TRR he quit working for Locke in 2025, in part because of the way he saw Locke use the shooting story for his own self-aggrandizement. While Guffey still has deep admiration for Locke and agrees with much of what he preaches, he said the minister’s lack of integrity made him question a lot of things.

The shooting “had nothing to do with Greg Locke or the church and it had everything to do with Greg’s wife’s son,” Guffey said. “Greg knows it was Caden, and it had to do with Caden, but he’s also like, ‘Hey, we can use this to our advantage.’”

Guffey, who worked security for Locke for 7 years, recalled racing to the Locke home the night of the shooting. He said the pastor called him after getting back from Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

A child was screaming in the background of the phone call, Guffey said, and there was a panic in Locke’s voice that he’d never heard before. Guffey threw on his shoes, grabbed his 9 mm and jumped in his truck.

When Guffey got there, the house was riddled with bullets. Empty shell casings were strewn up and down the driveway.

“I thought, ‘Man, they’re shooting at his house,’” Guffey told TRR. “But then things didn’t add up. Within about 30 minutes of being over there, it was like, ‘Huh. Okay. This was something the son was mixed up in.’”

As sheriff’s deputies processed the scene — measuring and photographing every bullet hole and asking about security footage — Greg Locke’s wife, Taisha Locke, kept questioning the teenager, Guffey said.

Caden McGee had been at the house with three friends — Trevone Pitts, Lucian Botte and Tyrus Butler — who reportedly left out a back gate before deputies responded to the 911 call. Taisha Locke was upset that Caden could have been hurt, but also clearly blamed him, Guffey recalled.

“She’s yelling at him, ‘You got to stop with this lifestyle. You got to stop living this lifestyle,’” Guffey said. He assumed “lifestyle” meant drug usage.

Guffey’s wife, Caity, meanwhile, was doing some internet sleuthing, and found a social media link to a young man with a car that matched the vehicle seen in the security footage. She told TRR that she clicked on the man’s profile and found a picture of him with a handgun, which could have been the one used in the shooting.

Caity Guffey felt in her spirit that this was the guy, she said. His name was Tyler Poole.

Detectives later confirmed her hunch, finding Instagram messages linking Poole, McGee and other young men arguing with each other, insulting each other and daring each other to escalate.

Jon Guffey told TRR he gave the information he and his wife had about Poole to deputies and heard them say that all signs at the scene pointed to a “bad dope deal.”

Then around 2 a.m., Guffey recalled, the Locke family invented another story.

“We were standing out in the driveway,” he said. “The cops were taking pictures of the back of the truck. Taisha comes back out of the house. She’s standing there for just a minute, and she says, ‘Now that I think about it, I think it was a hit on Greg.’”

According to Guffey, Taisha repeated the idea several times, saying, “I think it is. I think it is.” Then, according to Guffey she explicitly said, “We were going to let people believe it was an attack against pastor.”

Locke himself never directly lied and said he was targeted for his preaching, Guffey said But he implied a connection, according to Guffey, and led people to believe that a “madman” was angry at his sermons.

“It’s a good story to tell,” Guffey said. “It was done to bolster his reputation.”

Not a madman

People who knew Poole told TRR that it never made any sense to them that he would attack a pastor. The extended family identifies as Baptist and has occasionally gone to church over the years, but Poole was not especially religious. He was not interested in sermons and certainly didn’t care enough about anything Greg Locke was saying to get violent, they said.

Jason Poole, Poole’s uncle, told TRR he resented people calling his nephew a madman.

“He’s not what they’re trying to paint him to be,” Poole said. “He’s a very loving dude, a very outgoing guy. He was a young guy trying to find his way in the world.”

Poole’s mother left when he was a child, according to his uncle. He was raised by his father, who then died of a heart attack when Poole was 16.

After that, the young man was pretty much on his own, Jason Poole said.

“He really never had positive role models in his life. I wasn’t there for him like I should’ve been. He was just left to find his own way,” Jason told TRR.

A family friend who described herself as “like an aunt” said that Poole regularly got in trouble because of his anger, growing up. But he was a good person, she said. He wasn’t mean and wouldn’t fight people just to fight them.

“These charges he pled guilty to — he didn’t just do out of boredom,” Debra Peach said in a text message. “Tyler don’t just do stuff like this for no reason. … Them people did something to piss him off.”

But it wasn’t Locke that made him angry, she said.

The prosecutor agreed.

“I can give you the facts of the case,” Meade told TRR. “Poole got mad and got a gun. He did something dumb, and now he’s serving his sentence.”

Poole was sentenced to five years prison with credit for time served. He will be eligible for parole in 2029.

Daniel Silliman is senior reporter/editor at The Roys Report. He began his two decades in journalism covering crime in Atlanta and has since led major investigations into abuse and misconduct in Christian contexts. Daniel and his wife live in Johnson City, Tennessee.