On Sunday morning, 40-year-old Thomas Jacob Sanford allegedly drove his pickup truck into a meetinghouse of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) in Grand Blanc, Michigan. After the crash, he opened fire on the congregation, police said, then set the building ablaze.
Four people inside the church died. Ten were injured. Sanford was killed in a gunfight with police. Investigators said that Sanford, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, “hated people of the Mormon faith,” a sentiment reportedly tied to a failed relationship with a woman from the LDS church more than a decade ago.
The attack has shaken the small city of Grand Blanc, a suburb of Flint with a population of just under 8,000. Yet amid the devastation, something remarkable has emerged.
