About 35 miles from where a driver rammed a truck into a synagogue near Detroit on Thursday, congregants at a Michigan church endured a similar episode last year.
On Sept. 28, a gunman drove his vehicle into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc Township, started a fire and shot people gathering for a Sunday service. Four people died inside the church, two of gunshot wounds. The other two bodies were found inside the building’s charred remains. Eight people were also wounded, and the gunman died in an exchange of gunfire with responding officers.
A witness described hearing a sound similar to that of an explosion when the gunman crashed his vehicle into the building during the first half of the two-hour service. The witness said that he saw a man get out of his truck carrying what looked like an assault-style rifle and then began shooting.
Friends and acquaintances of the gunman later said that the gunman held a grudge toward people of Mormon faith. They told The New York Times that the suspect, a former Marine, had developed a hatred for Mormons after a painful breakup with a religious girlfriend years ago when he lived in Utah.
The gunman, the acquaintances said, would say that he considered Mormons “the Antichrist.” As recently as a week before the attack, the gunman had ranted about the church to a City Council candidate who knocked on his door while canvassing.
Christina Morales is a national reporter for The Times.
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