The woman who was Inside the Michigan church When her father and three others were killed, she and the gunman said they had locked their eyes between chaos, and she could see his soul, seeing his pain and the sense of lost. She immediately said she forgives him “with my heart.”
“He let me live,” wrote 45-year-old Lisa Louis.
A photo of a handwritten statement written by Louis has been posted. on facebook. She explained how she encountered the archer and also pleaded with the public for peace.
“Fear creates anger, anger creates hatred, and hatred creates suffering,” Louis writes. “If we can stop hatred, we can stop suffering, but it will be us all to stop hatred.”
Thomas “Jake” Sanford, 40, plunged a pickup truck into the church of Jesus Christ in the Latter-day Saints Chapel in Grand Blanctownship near Flint Sunday, shot it at the congregation and destroyed the building in a fire, police said. Police killed him on the scene.
My friend said Sanford He expressed hatred For the Mormon Church, he lives in Utah and is generally known after returning to Michigan a few years ago. Utah is the church’s hometown.
Louis said he was kneeling next to his fatal wounded father, Craig Hayden, when Sanford approached and asked the question.
“I never took my eyes off his eyes, something happened, I saw the pain, he got lost,” Louis wrote. “I felt it deeply with every fiber of my existence. I forgive him, I quickly forgive him, not with words, but with my heart.”
She also wrote: “I looked at his soul, he saw mine. He made me live.”
Louis refused to be interviewed by the Associated Press. Her brother-in-law, Terry Green, wrote on Facebook that she believes her interactions with the gunman “spented valuable time for others to escape.”
In addition to Hayden, William “Pat” Howard and John Bond were also killed. The fourth victim of the shooter has not been made public. Eight people were injured.
Meanwhile, another church said Wednesday that Sanford tried to baptize his 10-year-old son there on September 21, and was upset when he was refused.
Sanford did not threaten the staff at the River River Church in Goodrich, but he was “frustrated.” “You could see him upset… he wanted to do it.”
Church staff tried to grasp the boy’s belief in Jesus Christ, but “their son came to a conclusion that he couldn’t understand what he was doing,” Combs said.
Sanford and his wife did not regularly attend church, Combs said, but said they had held events there 10 years ago to raise funds for the boy’s medical care. He was born in a healthy state that produced unusually high levels of insulin.
