In the wake of Sunday’s deadly mass shooting at a Michigan church, one worshipper who escaped the attack described the fear he felt running from gunfire and looking for his family.
“That was the scariest moment of my life, not knowing if my family was OK,” Paul Kirby said Monday on “CBS Mornings.”
Kirby’s wife and children were with him at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Michigan’s Grand Blanc Township when a gunman rammed his vehicle into the church and began shooting just before 10:30 a.m. Sunday. Kirby said church members were attending a service when they heard “a loud boom coming from the back wall of the chapel.”
“Several of us men decided to get up and go outside to look at what happened, just in case somebody ran off the road and hit the building,” Kirby said. “We didn’t think anything bad was going to happen.”
Once outside, Kirby saw a man holding a gun and then start shooting. At that point, he said he turned around to run back inside the church and find his family. He recalled feeling shrapnel strike his left leg and seeing a bullet pierce a glass door just a foot away.
“It was just so unexpected,” Kirby said. “Once I saw the gun and start hearing him start shooting it, it was just a lot of fear.”
As he was running, he said he was “expecting to get a bullet in the back of my legs or in my back or something.”
Investigators are returning Monday to the scene of the attack, which the FBI is probing as “an act of targeted violence,” CBS News Detroit reported.
Authorities have identified the gunman as Thomas Jacob Sanford, 40, of Burton, Michigan. They say he drove his vehicle through the front doors of the church and then proceeded to fire multiple rounds from an assault rifle. About 100 worshippers were inside the building at the time. Officials say he also used an accelerant to start a blaze that destroyed much of the building.
At least four people were killed in the shooting and at least eight others suffered injuries that required hospitalization. One of the injured people was in critical condition, while the remaining seven were reported to be in stable condition, according to CBS News Detroit.
As of late Sunday, authorities believed some people were still unaccounted for, said Grand Blanc Township Police Chief William Renye.
The shooter died after exchanging gunfire with officers who responded to the church, the police chief said.
CBS News has confirmed that the gunman served in the U.S. Marine Corps for more than three years, between 2004 and 2008, and was deployed overseas from August 2007 to March 2008 during the Iraq war.
The FBI is leading the investigation into Sunday’s attack and has asked anyone with information to report tips by phone or online.
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