 A police car blocks the roadway leading to a youth ministry dormitory on the campus of Faith Bible Church in Arvada, Colo., early on Sunday. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/David Zalubowski |
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The gunman believed to have killed four people at a megachurch and a missionary training school had been thrown out of the school about three years ago and had been sending the place hate mail, police said in court papers Monday.
The gunman was identified as Matthew Murray, 24, who was home-schooled by his family and raised in what a friend said was a deeply religious Christian household. Murray's father is a neurologist and a leading multiple-sclerosis researcher.
KUSA-TV in Denver reported Monday that Murray posted several rants on a website for people who have left evangelical religious groups. The most recent post was Sunday morning.
The station, which did not identify the site, said Murray wrote: "You Christians brought this on yourselves."
"All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you...as I can, especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world."
The station said Murray's posts were removed from the site after Sunday's killings and authorities were aware of them and investigating.
Police in Colorado Springs were not immediately available for comment on the writings. An Arvada police spokeswoman said she had no specific information about them.
Murray's relatives said they were grief-stricken and baffled.
"Our family cannot express the magnitude of our grief for the victims and families of this tragedy," they said in a statement read by the gunman's uncle, Phil Abeyta, who fought back tears.
"On our behalf of our family and our son we ask for forgiveness. We cannot understand why this has happened."
Five people - including Murray - were killed, and five others wounded Sunday in the two eruptions of violence 12 hours and 100 kilometres apart.
The first attack took place at Youth With a Mission, a training centre for missionaries in the Denver suburb of Arvada; the other occurred at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where Murray was shot to death by a security guard. The missionary training centre maintains an office at the 10,000-member church.
"Through both investigations it has been determined that most likely the suspect in both shootings are one in the same," police said in court papers, confirming what investigators suspected early on.
Colorado Springs police said the "common denominator in both locations" was Youth With a Mission.
"It appears that the suspect had been kicked out of the program three years prior and during the past few weeks had sent different forms of hate mail to the program and/or its director," Det. Bradley Pratt wrote.
Earlier in the day, a law enforcement source who spoke on condition of anonymity said it appeared that Murray "hated Christians."
Investigators have not said whether Murray singled out his victims. But the two people killed at the church - sisters Stephanie and Rachael Works, ages 18 and 16 - frequented the training centre, their uncle Mark Schaepe, of Lincoln, Neb., told The Gazette of Colorado Springs.
Authorities searched the Murray home on a quiet street in Englewood on Monday for guns, ammunition and computer. No one was home when a reporter visited the split-level brick home early Monday. Murray's father, Ronald S. Murray, is a neurologist who is chief executive of the Rocky Mountain Multiple Sclerosis Center in Englewood.
Matthew Murray lived there along with a brother, Christopher, 21, a student at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla.
A neighbour, Cody Askeland, 19, said the brothers were home-schooled, describing the whole family as "very, very religious."
Christopher studied for a semester at Colorado Christian University before transferring to Oral Roberts, said Ronald Rex, dean of admissions and marketing at Colorado Christian. He said Matthew Murray had been in contact with school officials this summer about attending the school but decided he wasn't interested because he thought the school was too expensive.
Police said Murray's only previous brush with the law was a traffic ticket earlier this year.
Senior Pastor Brady Boyd of New Life Church said the gunman had no connection to the church. "We don't know this shooter," Boyd said. "He showed up on our property yesterday with a gun with the intention of hurting people, and he did."
The gunman opened fire at 12:30 a.m. at the Youth With a Mission centre. Witnesses said the man asked to spend the night there and opened fire with a handgun when he was turned down. They described him as a young man, perhaps 20, in a dark jacket and cap.
More than 12 hours later, at New Life Church, a gunman wearing a trench coat and carrying a high-powered rifle opened fire in the parking lot and later walked into the church as a service was letting out.
Jeanne Assam, a church member who volunteers as a security guard, shot Murray, who was found with a rifle and two handguns, police said.
"It seemed like it was me, the gunman and God," said Assam, whose hands trembled a little as she recounted the shooting during a news conference Monday.
Assam is a former police officer who worked in Minneapolis during the 1990s, Minneapolis police Sgt. Jesse Garcia said. Garcia said Monday night he didn't know the exact dates of her employment with the force and couldn't comment on why she left.
Boyd said the gunman had a lot of ammunition and estimated that 40 rounds had been fired inside the church, leaving what looked like a "war scene."
The father of the Works sisters, David Works, 51, was in fair condition with gunshot wounds to the abdomen and groin.
"You can imagine, as parents, losing two children coming to church, showing up for a worship service, not bothering anyone," Boyd said. "This is a very godly family, a family that serves our church. One of the young girls just returned from overseas on a mission trip. They're very committed."
Jessie Gingrich, who had left New Life and was in the parking lot getting into her car, saw the gunman get a rifle from his trunk and open fire on a van with people inside. Gingrich said she cowered in her vehicle, fumbling with the key.
"I was just expecting for the next gunshot to be coming through my car. Miraculously - by the grace of God - it did not," she told ABC's "Good Morning America."
About 7,000 people were in and around the church the time of the shooting, Boyd said. Security had been beefed up after the shootings hours earlier in Arvada, he said. The church had a total of 15 to 20 volunteer security officers inside at the time of the attack, he said.
Some members of the congregation reacted with compassion and forgiveness, in keeping with their faith.
Ashley Gibbs was getting into a car with David Harris when they heard the gunshots, a sound like someone kicking ice from the side of a car, she said. Harris said he saw the gunman.
"I was in the military for about three years, and the way he was holding the rifle looked just like the way we were taught to when I was in the military," he told NBC's "Today" show.
They stayed in the vehicle and prayed for the gunman.
"It was obvious that he was in some sort of pain and going through a lot," Gibbs told "Today." "I just prayed God would bring him peace."
New Life, with a largely upper middle-class membership, was founded by the Rev. Ted Haggard, who was dismissed last year after a former male prostitute alleged he had a three-year cash-for-sex relationship with him. Haggard admitted committing unspecified "sexual immorality."
The two people killed at the missionary centre were identified as Tiffany Johnson, 26, and Philip Crouse, 24.
Johnson, who grew up in Chisholm, Minn., loved working with children and wanted to see the world, said family friend Carla Macynski.
"Tiffany was a well-liked, easygoing 26-year-old. She was friendly, adventurous and a definite leader," Macynski said as she choked back tears. Johnson had travelled to Egypt, Libya and South Africa with the missionary group.
Crouse, of Alaska, was a former skinhead who went through a dramatic spiritual conversion at 18. He had helped build a foster home at a Crow Indian reservation in Montana, said Ronny Morris, who works with a Denver chapter of the mission.
"Whenever somebody asks me to give a specific situation where a kid's life has been changed or transformed, I always think of Phil, because he had such a radical transformation of life," said pastor Zach Chandler in Anchorage, Alaska.
Youth With a Mission was started in 1960 and now has 1,100 locations with 16,000 full-time staff, said Darv Smith, director of a Youth With a Mission centre in Boulder. The Arvada centre was founded in 1984.
The Colorado shootings came days after a 19-year-old gunman opened fire at a busy department store in Omaha, Neb., killing eight people and himself.
