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Gunman stuns US churchgoers, kills pastor
AFP - Monday, March 9
CHICAGO, (AFP) - - A gunman stunned parishioners at a midwestern US church when he strolled into a service and opened fire, spraying the pastor's Bible with bullets before shooting him dead at point-blank range.
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The shooter, who has not been identified, walked down the center aisle of First Baptist Church in Maryville, Illinois at about 8:15 am (1315 GMT), exchanged a few words with head pastor Fred Winters and then fired four shots with a .45 caliber handgun, officials said.
The first shot hit the pastor's bible and "exploded the top of the bible into what many in the congregation thought was confetti," said Larry Trent, director of the Illinois state police.
"In fact, some thought it was some type of skit or some type of program at the time, which is really not uncommon in these types of shootings."
Then, a bullet hit the pastor in the chest.
Just before firing the fatal shot, Trent said the gunman and the pastor exchanged words, and police would review videotapes to try to determine what the conversation entailed.
"Right now, the only thing we know is that the suspect said something to the pastor and the pastor said something back to him. We don't know what that was," Trent said.
"It was almost as if pastor may have recognized him but we're not sure about that at all. There was something spoken, but people that were closest to them at the time couldn't say what that was."
According to initial police reports, the gunman then pulled out a knife and began stabbing himself when the gun jammed.
"Some parishioners tackled him and held him on the floor," Illinois state police spokesman Ralph Timmins said, adding that two people received knife injuries and were treated at hospital.
However Trent said later that it was unclear who inflicted the knife wounds.
"When he was tackled by two of the members, we don't know whether he fell on the knife injuring himself at the time or whether it was self-inflicted during the struggle," Trent said.
Police had not yet questioned the gunman because he was undergoing surgery for a serious knife wound to his neck. Trent could not say for certain when investigators would be able to question him.
Police have not yet determined what relationship, if any, the gunman had to the pastor. He was not an active member of the church and does not appear to have a criminal record.
Trent described the parishioners who tackled the 27-year-old gunman as "heroic" and said far more people could have been hurt if the gun had not jammed.
"The fact ... the shell caught in the ejector may have prevented something else. We don't know. Can't answer that," Trent said at a news conference.
Mark Jones, a worship minister at the church, said the community was puzzled by the gruesome shooting.
"We have no idea what this guy's motive was. We don't know him," said Jones.
Jones praised the parishioners who risked their own lives to subdue the shooter and said the congregation would find comfort in their faith to move forward from what he sees as a one-time, random act of violence.
"We'll be surrounded by questions that we may never know the answers to but we trust who God is," he told reporters.
"People can't stop living their lives. They can't be paralyzed by fear."
About 150 people were attending the service at the time of the shooting.
"I'm in shock," church member Lindsay Osborne, 18, told the St. Louis Post Dispatch as she stood in bare feet with mascara running down her face outside the hospital where her pastor had died.
"We were going to stand in the parking lot and pray for him, but they came out and told us they lost him in there," said her mother Carol Covinsky, 52.
Winters, 45, is survived by his wife Cindy and two daughters.
He had been pastor of the church for 22 years, during which its average attendance grew from 32 to 1,200 people, according to the church's website.
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A suicidal gunman shot and killed a pastor in an Illinois church on Sunday morning and then pulled out a knife and began stabbing himself when the gun jammed, police said.
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