The daughter of a man killed in the grisly mass shooting at a Michigan Mormon church said she looked directly into the eyes of the gunman — and that she forgave him on the spot and was spared her life.
Lisa Louis — the daughter of victim Craig Hayden — penned a heart-wrenching letter revealing how crazed gunman Thomas Jacob Sanford approached her as she cowered over her father’s body in the thick of the chaos he caused at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc Sunday.
“When he came over to me I felt very calm, peaceful even as I kneeled next to my dad, my hands still on Dad,” Louis wrote in a letter her sister posted to Facebook Monday.
“It felt like a long time I stared into his eyes,” she added. “The only way I can describe it is I saw into his soul. I never took my eyes off his eyes, something happened, I saw pain, he felt lost. I deeply felt it with every fiber of my being.”
The intense moment unfolded just moments after Sanford drove his pickup truck into the Mormon church as congregants were holding their regular Sunday service inside. People initially rushed to Sanford’s aid, thinking he’d been in an accident, then he quickly stepped out of the car and began firing a rifle at them.
At least four people were killed and eight more wounded before Sanford, 40, set the church on fire and was fatally gunned down by responding officers. The church all but burned to the ground before firefighters could douse the flames.
Two of the fatal victims were killed in the fire, the Detroit News reported, while the two others were shot dead — including Hayden, who was in his 70s and attending the service with Louis.
But Louis was miraculously spared.
“I stared into his eyes while answering his question,” she wrote, without explaining what Sanford asked.
“I forgave him, I forgave him right there, not in words, but with my heart,” she said. “I saw into his soul and he saw into mine. He let me live. I am sharing this now because I believe it is just one of the many reasons why I was there.”
Louis also said she distinctly remembered Sanford having blue eyes — writing that she told investigators he had “blue eyes brightened by tears, red and teary” — and was baffled to later learn they were actually brown.
“In the middle of the night while texting my sister I realized it was my eyes I saw. I saw into his soul and he saw into mine,” she wrote. “He let me live.”
She said she felt she was there for a reason and had to share what she experienced while encouraging others to set aside hatred.
“I needed to share this for papa for Dad, for anyone who can set aside hate,” she wrote. “If you stop letting anger in, hate can’t spread. We can stop it!”
Sanford was identified as a Marine veteran who served in the Iraq War. He was also a husband and father to a young son, and loved ones have said they have no idea what his motivations could have been.
Some reports, however, have said Sanford harbored virulent anti-Mormon sentiments — and even once told a local city council candidate that the religion was “the antichrist.”
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