Oh my God.

[rivka]

A man with a shotgun walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church this morning and started shooting. One person (or maybe three; news reports differ) is dead and six more are critically injured.

TVUUC is Michael's old congregation. I am crying here. I just can't imagine. I can't imagine. They were at church. They were enfolded in a loving community. And then.

Kemper tried to comfort a little boy whose mother had been shot in the head. She said there was a handprint of blood on the back of the boys’s shirt.

I just got an e-mail on the SUUSI mailing list from someone who was with us at Closing Circle yesterday:

All of us who attended SUUSI were there, but are okay. My friend Greg is dead. He leaves a widow and foster son. Five more are listed in critical condition. We didn't recognize him and his motive is not known. I'm a little shaky, but okay so far. I helped hold him down while we waited for the police. He had a pump-action shotgun. I applaud those who disarmed him. No children were harmed, though the service was a children's play, "Annie," and the sanctuary was full of children.

Witnesses say that the man who was killed stood directly in front of the gunman, deliberately, to shield others.

A blogger who is a member of TVUUC mentions that the church just put up a sign welcoming gays and lesbians to the congregation. They host a drop-in center for gay teenagers "plus any other youth who are being harassed for religious beliefs, appearance, or abilities."

I just can't believe it. I am numb with shock.

They were at church.

Comments

[rivka.livejournal.com]

...Yeah. The eyewitness account from the mother who was in the "crying room" with her toddler, watching one of her older children perform onstage...

And this part, again, because I can't stop reading it: Kemper tried to comfort a little boy whose mother had been shot in the head. She said there was a handprint of blood on the back of the boys’s shirt.

[ailbhe]

It's the woman blocking the doorway who sticks in my head. Her other children were out there. What kind of choice was there? Grabbed her baby, blocked the door. And watched. God.

[ailbhe]

Oh, god. I am all but convinced that the second dead victim is this woman.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Second dead victim's name and age have now been released. She was 61, so probably not the mother of the small child. In the comments section of one of the local news sites, a woman posted saying that her daughter-in-law had been shot in front of her 3- and 5-year-old children, and was in critical condition but they thought she wouldn't die.

[mkillingworth.livejournal.com]

I went to high school with Barbara.