The man who officials said crashed a vehicle into a Michigan church and opened fire on the congregation has been identified by the police as a 40-year-old from Burton, Mich., who went to high school nearby and served in the Marines.
The authorities said they believed the man, identified as Thomas Jacob Sanford, also intentionally set fire to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints building in Grand Blanc Township, Mich. They added that congregants were inside attending services when the building was engulfed in flames.
The shooter was “neutralized” in an exchange of gunfire with responding officers, the police said. Two of his victims also died, and eight others were wounded.
Chief William Renye of the Grand Blanc Township Police Department did not provide a motive for the attack.
Records show that the gunman, who also went by Jake, graduated from a nearby high school in 2004. He served in the Marines from 2004 to 2008, and was deployed to Iraq from 2007 to 2008.
Mr. Sanford’s father declined to comment in a brief phone conversation. Several attempts to reach the suspect’s wife and other immediate family members were unsuccessful.
Ryan Lopez, a former high school classmate who lives in the nearby city of Davison, Mich., said that he regularly saw Mr. Sanford around town and was still trying to process the news. He said he last saw Mr. Sanford at a gym in Davison a few weeks earlier, and that nothing had seemed out of the ordinary.
“He was happy to see me, he just seemed normal,” Mr. Lopez said. Mr. Sanford was an avid hunter of geese, turkey and deer and had seemed like a typical “country kid” while growing up, Mr. Lopez said. After high school, both men joined the Marines, where Mr. Sanford did motor transport work, Mr. Lopez said.
For roughly a year around 2010, Sandra Winter, 56, rented a room to Mr. Sanford in her home in Jeremy Ranch, Utah. She described him as an unassuming man who worked for a local business doing snow removal and landscaping. He also had creative ambitions as a sculpture artist working with Sheetrock, Ms. Winter recalled.
Ms. Winter said she was shocked to hear that he was identified as the attacker in the shooting, a situation she said she would “never in a million years” have imagined.
In 2016, he married a woman who had gone to the same high school he did, according to court records, and they have a 10-year-old son.
April Van, 66, who lives in an apartment complex near the suspect’s most recent address, said that she did not know him but she had seen the son taking out trash.
Another neighbor, Randy Thronson, 71, said he hadn’t talked to Mr. Sanford for about two years but that he “seemed like a nice guy” and would plow neighbors’ driveways in the winter for free.
“Something must have happened, snapped somehow,” he said as police secured the area around the suspect’s home.
Scott Atkinson contributed reporting from Grand Blanc and Burton, Mich. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
Talya Minsberg is a Times reporter covering breaking and developing news.
Anushka Patil is a Times reporter covering breaking and developing news around the world.
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