Gunman opens fire at U.S. church, kills two

Praxius

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Police stand guard outside the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tenn. on Sunday, July 27, 2008.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080727/gunman_church_080727/20080727?hub=World

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- A gunman opened fire at a church youth performance Sunday and killed two people, including a man who witnesses called a hero for shielding others from a shotgun blast.

Seven adults were also injured but no children were harmed at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. Church members said they dove under pews or ran from the building when the shooting started.

The gunman was tackled by congregants and was eventually taken into police custody.

Jim D. Adkisson, 58, was charged with first-degree murder and was being held on US$1 million bail, according to city spokesman Randy Kenner, who did not know if the suspect had retained an attorney. Authorities were searching Adkisson's home in the Knoxville bedroom community of Powell, Kenner said.

The man slain was identified as Greg McKendry, 60, a longtime church member and usher. Church member Barbara Kemper told The Associated Press that McKendry "stood in the front of the gunman and took the blast to protect the rest of us."

Linda Kreager, 61, died at the University of Tennessee Medical Center a few hours after the shooting, Knoxville city spokesman Randall Kenner said.

Five people remained hospitalized, all in critical or serious condition. Two others were treated and released.

The gunman's motive is not yet known. The church, like many other Unitarian Universalist churches, promotes progressive social work, such as desegregation and fighting for the rights of women and gays. The Knoxville congregation has provided sanctuary for political refugees, fed the homeless and founded a chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, according to its Web site.

Kemper said the gunman shouted before he opened fire.

"It was hateful words. He was saying hateful things," she said, but refused to elaborate.

The FBI was assisting in the case in case it turns out be a hate crime, Police Chief Sterling Owen said. Police were taking statements from witnesses and collecting video cameras from church members who taped the performance.

There were about 200 people watching a performance by 25 children based on the musical "Annie" when the shooting took place.

Church member Mark Harmon said he was in the first row. "It had barely begun when there was an incredibly loud bang," he said.

Harmon said he thought the noise was part of the play, then he heard a second loud bang. As he dove for cover, he realized a woman behind him was bleeding. She looked like she was in shock, touching her wound, he said.

"It seems so unreal," Harmon said. "You're sitting in church, you're watching a children's performance of a play and suddenly you hear a bang."

Harmon said church members just behind him in the second and third rows were shot. His wife told him that she saw the gunman pull the shotgun out of a guitar case.

Witnesses reported hearing about three blasts from the .12-gauge shotgun, which spreads pellets out when the shot leaves the barrel. Witnesses said they did not recognize the gunman.

Church members said the gunman was tackled by John Bohstedt, who played "Daddy Warbucks" in the performance. He declined comment when reached by phone at his home.

Friends of McKendry said he was friendly with everyone.

"Greg McKendry was a very large gentlemen, one of those people you might describe as a refrigerator with a head," said member Schera Chadwick, whose husband, Ted Lollis, arrived at the church just after the shooting. "He looked like a football player. He did obviously stand up and put himself in between the shooter and the congregation."

McKendry and his wife had recently taken in a foster child.

The church's minister was on vacation in western North Carolina at the time of the shooting but returned Sunday afternoon.

"We've been touched by a horrible act of violence. We are in a process of healing and we ask everyone for your prayers," the Rev. Chris Buice said in a statement outside the church. "I will tell you we love Greg McKendry. We are grieving the loss of a wonderful man."

Seems like there's almost one mass shooting per week down in the US these days.
 

scratch

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Police stand guard outside the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tenn. on Sunday, July 27, 2008.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080727/gunman_church_080727/20080727?hub=World



Seems like there's almost one mass shooting per week down in the US these days.

Well, when you have a gun toting POTUS (concealed) at that, what does the citizenry do? Sadly it happens every day to the point of the Americans becoming blase after being outraged.
 

Risus

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Well, when you have a gun toting POTUS (concealed) at that, what does the citizenry do? Sadly it happens every day to the point of the Americans becoming blase after being outraged.
Thats what happens when you have the yankee right to bear arms mentality....
 

missile

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The man who died protecting the congregation is a real hero. As religions go, this one seems to be a pretty decent one and very forward thinking..i can imagine some of the hillbillies down there would have a problem with such beliefs.:-(
 

lone wolf

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The man who died protecting the congregation is a real hero. As religions go, this one seems to be a pretty decent one and very forward thinking..i can imagine some of the hillbillies down there would have a problem with such beliefs.:-(

Report says a "very large gentleman". That hero was a big, big man....
 

karrie

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A very heroic congregation. I wonder if the reaction of the parishioners had to do with there being a stage full of children, or if they'd have stood in front of the gun and tackled the guy regardless?
 

Colpy

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Thats what happens when you have the yankee right to bear arms mentality....

So, we have a Canadian "right to bear arms" mentality? Or have you forgotten Dawson College, the Ottawa bus station, the Montreal Massacre, the Alberta school shootings......

Even more to the point, you ever pay attention to Israel, where twice this month civilians carrying guns killed aggressors before they could inflict serious damage?

Did you know at least three school shootings in the USA have been stopped by armed civilians?

Did you know Americans use firearms to defend themselves almost 2 million times each year? Almost always without firing a shot. Did you know Canadians use firearms to defend themselves about 70,000 times a year? Usually without firing a shot.

The problem is not the right to keep and bear arms........it is the unfortunate fact that there are places that either ban the carrying of weapons (Virginia Tech, now there's a successful policy) or places where people simply don't....like the Unitarian Church.

Too bad he didn't try that **** in a good-ole-boy Baptist church.

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. :)
 

Colpy

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A very heroic congregation. I wonder if the reaction of the parishioners had to do with there being a stage full of children, or if they'd have stood in front of the gun and tackled the guy regardless?

Absolutely Karrie! A good post.
 

Risus

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So, we have a Canadian "right to bear arms" mentality? Or have you forgotten Dawson College, the Ottawa bus station, the Montreal Massacre, the Alberta school shootings......

Even more to the point, you ever pay attention to Israel, where twice this month civilians carrying guns killed aggressors before they could inflict serious damage?

Did you know at least three school shootings in the USA have been stopped by armed civilians?

Did you know Americans use firearms to defend themselves almost 2 million times each year? Almost always without firing a shot. Did you know Canadians use firearms to defend themselves about 70,000 times a year? Usually without firing a shot.

The problem is not the right to keep and bear arms........it is the unfortunate fact that there are places that either ban the carrying of weapons (Virginia Tech, now there's a successful policy) or places where people simply don't....like the Unitarian Church.

Too bad he didn't try that **** in a good-ole-boy Baptist church.

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. :)

Colpy you know that it happens every week in yankeeland. You mentioned 4 examples which happened in Canada, over a span of how many years???? Get your head out of your butt. If guns weren't so readily accessable down there, there would be a lot less of this BS.
 

Zzarchov

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Colpy you know that it happens every week in yankeeland. You mentioned 4 examples which happened in Canada, over a span of how many years???? Get your head out of your butt. If guns weren't so readily accessable down there, there would be a lot less of this BS.

It happens every week? I wasn't aware. Population wise that would be interesting to see if it happens more than 10 times as often in the US (as their pop is 10 times ours, all things considered there should be 10 times the incidents).

Or would it be like britain where tough gun laws just increased knife crime?

Guns are not dangerous in the hands of a competant adult whom you would entrust with a vote.

If you wouldn't trust people with a gun without training, why would you trust a guy like that with a vote (he can do alot of damage if he ever elected someone who supports murdering homosexuals)
 

Nuggler

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"" The church, like many other Unitarian Universalist churches, promotes progressive social work, such as desegregation and fighting for the rights of women and gays. The Knoxville congregation has provided sanctuary for political refugees, fed the homeless and founded a chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union"" endquote.

Don't want none o them nutbars runnin round doin good now, do we................(S)

What a guy. Took a shotgun blast to save others. Hero in my books.

A damn shame though.

:angry3:
 

Colpy

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Colpy you know that it happens every week in yankeeland. You mentioned 4 examples which happened in Canada, over a span of how many years???? Get your head out of your butt. If guns weren't so readily accessable down there, there would be a lot less of this BS.

I named 4 off the top of my head.

The United States has 10 times the population......can you name 40 episodes such as this in the USA? I doubt it.

And guns do not murder make....in Israel people carry weapons openly all the time. check out the Israeli murder rate.....despite political turmoil and terrorism. In Switzerland, adult males must keep a fully automatic rifle (that's a machine gun to you) in their house with ammo.....check out their murder rate. For that matter, check out the murder rate in the USA....outside the inner cities. Would it surprize you to learn that the murder rate in the American west (Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas)(believe me, NO gun control there) is LESS than that in the Canadian west?(Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta) And dropping? While the rate in Canada rises?

You pull your head out of your ass, try thinking outside the box for once.

research.
 

Risus

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Colpy:

Mass murderers
 

karrie

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- Three hundred and twenty-nine people, including 278 Canadians, killed when bomb explodes on an Air India jet flying from Toronto to Bombay in June 1985. Two British Columbia men were tried for murder but were found not guilty.
- Fourteen women killed by anti-feminist Marc Lepine at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique engineering school in December 1989. Lepine wounded another nine women and four men and fatally shot himself.
- Thirteen people died after being herded into a storage room in Montreal's Gargantua nightclub in 1975. Some were shot but most suffocated when the building was set on fire in what was believed to be an underworld contract hit.
- Nine people gunned down by Mark Chahal, a spurned son-in-law in Vernon, B.C., who killed his estranged wife, her bride-to-be-sister and seven other relatives before killing himself in April 1996.
- Nine people slain in 1967 in Shell Lake, Sask., by Robert Hoffman, who was later sent to an Ontario mental institution.
- Nine miners killed by deliberately set blast in Yellowknife's Giant Mine in September 1992. Roger Warren, a striking miner, sentenced to life in prison for setting the bomb during a bitter strike-lockout.
- The bodies of eight adult males are found in a farmer's field near Shedden, in southwestern Ontario.
- Seven people, including six children, murdered in 1965 by Leonard Hogue, a former Vancouver police constable, who then killed himself.
- Bodies of six campers found in burned-out car in Wells Gray Provincial Park north of Kamloops, B.C., in 1982. David Shearing of Clearwater, B.C., confesses.
- Bodies of four adults and a baby associated with the doomsday cult Order of the Solar Temple found in the burned-out remains of a chalet in Morin Heights, Que., in 1994. The couple believed responsible fled to Switzerland where they were among 53 cultists who were killed or committed suicide.
- Five people found dead on a farm in Abbotsford, B.C., in September 1996. Police believed the killings were related to the drug trade.
- Four employees killed at OC Transpo transit garage in Ottawa by co-worker Pierre Lebrun in April 1999. Lebrun, who had complained of ongoing harassment in the workplace, then killed himself.
- Four members of engineering faculty at Concordia University in Montreal gunned down in 1992 by Valery Fabricant, a disgruntled colleague sentenced to life in prison with no parole for 25 years.
- Three people killed by wild machine-gun fire in 1984 when Canadian Forces Cpl. Denis Lortie invades Quebec legislature. Lortie freed on day parole in 1995.
- Three people killed and a fourth injured after a botched robbery at a McDonald's restaurant in Sydney River, N.S. in 1992. Three men handed life sentences for the triple-slaying.
- Three shot to death in 1992 at Ontario Glove, a plant in Waterloo, Ont., by co-worker Patrick Dombroskie. He then drove to nearby Cambridge and surrendered to police.



I count 16 cases in this article regarding Canada. Considering the US has a more dense population, and almost 10 times the people, I don't think we're 'better' when it comes to the death toll.
 
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talloola

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Many many children die in the u.s. each year, from guns lying around, carelessly
put there from the 'idiot' who thinks he/she should have it, well, buddy, you killed
your own child.
 

Colpy

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Many many children die in the u.s. each year, from guns lying around, carelessly
put there from the 'idiot' who thinks he/she should have it, well, buddy, you killed
your own child.


A child is more apt to drown in a swimming pool.

Fact.

I suppose those monsters that own swimming pools.........NAW....they might be good liberal democrats.
 

Colpy

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Risus.....that ain't 40, and you started in 1857 fer God's sakes.

You can't be serious.

Karrie, thank you for the list.
 

talloola

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A child is more apt to drown in a swimming pool.

Fact.

I suppose those monsters that own swimming pools.........NAW....they might be good liberal democrats.

Oh yeah, how silly of me, one just eliminates the other right?
And, what on earth has this to do with politics!!!
The comparison makes no sense, two wrongs don't make a right, lets get on the
swimming pool thing too, 'without the sarcasm', a child's life is worth more than that.