A Sunday church service in Detroit turned violent earlier this month when a man, carrying a brick, threatened to hurt the pastor, only for the pastor to pull out a semiautomatic pistol and fatally shoot him before the entire congregation.
“They knew each other and had some type of problem before,” Assistant Detroit Police Chief Steve Dolunt said of the pastor and the victim. “When I got there, the body had already been moved. The pastor was in custody. We had the gun.”
The shooting took place after the service ended at City of God Church on Grand River Avenue. Dolunt explained that even though the man carrying a brick did not make it to the storefront church, he did chase the pastor in the vestibule. The unidentified pastor reportedly responded with gunfire, shooting his attacker several times in the chest. The man was immediately rushed to Botsford Hospital where he died soon after.
According to Dolunt, a case had already been lodged against the man, after he barged into the church and threatened several congregants earlier this year.
“It’s tragic,” Dolunt said, noting that church violence is not new to Detroit, or anywhere else.
Religious leaders in Detroit have frequently denounced violence, though they have refrained from commenting about whether priests, pastors or clergymen should equip themselves with guns and other such munitions. In July, after a string of fatal shootings hit the city in Michigan, several religious leaders united to issue a plea to the community, urging every individual to help stop the growing violence.
“The countless killings. The lives being lost continually. We can't have a summer of killing,” Reverend Eddie Connor Jr. of Open Door Ministries International said during a meeting with local religious leaders. “We can't have a summer where we're burying or having these young lives being exterminated."
Reverend Norman Thomas of Sacred Heart Church also spoke out in his attempt to denounce gun violence.
"The common good is the value that supersedes all other things. So when we witness our brothers and sisters who decide to settle arguments, who take revenge against other people by killing them, we have to stand up and speak out,” Thomas said. “We hope that those who are witnesses to these kinds of things will be able to say, 'My loyalty is to all the people, my silence is intolerable, I've got to do something.'"
Photo Credits: Fox News
