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Woman says she spoke with Michigan church shooter amid attack and ‘he let me live’

Lisa Louis says she was next to her mortally wounded father, when the attacker approached and asked a question

Associated Press

Thu 2 Oct 2025 07.52 EDT

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A woman who was inside a Michigan church when her father and three other people were killed says she and the gunman locked eyes during the chaos and she was able to look into his soul, seeing his pain and a feeling of being lost. She said she instantly forgave him “with my heart”.

“He let me live,” Lisa Louis, 45, wrote.

A photo of a handwritten statement that Louis wrote was posted on Facebook. She described how she encountered the shooter and she also made a plea to the public for peace.

“Fear breeds anger, anger breeds hate, hate breeds suffering,” Louis wrote. “If we can stop the hate we can stop the suffering. But stopping the hate takes all of us.”

Thomas “Jake” Sanford, 40, rammed his pickup truck into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chapel in Grand Blanc Township, near Flint, on Sunday, shot at the congregation and destroyed the building with fire, police said. Police killed him at the scene.

Friends said Sanford had expressed hatred toward the Mormon church, as it is commonly known, after living in Utah and returning to Michigan years ago. Utah is the home state of the church.

Michigan church shooting suspect bore a hatred of Mormon religion, local…Michigan suspect was a marine veteran, as was suspect in another recent shooting in North Carolina, who has been…

Louis said she was kneeling next to her mortally wounded father, Craig Hayden, 72, when Sanford approached and asked a question.

“I never took my eyes off his eyes, something happened, I saw pain, he felt lost,” Louis wrote. “I deeply felt it with every fiber of my being. I forgave him, I forgave him right there, not in words, but with my heart.”

She also wrote: “I saw into his soul and he saw into mine. He let me live.”

Louis declined to be interviewed by the Associated Press. Her brother-in-law, Terry Green, wrote on Facebook that he believes her interactions with the gunman “bought precious time for others to escape”.

Besides Hayden, William “Pat” Howard and John Bond also were killed. The shooter’s fourth victim has not been publicly identified. Eight people were wounded.

Meanwhile, a different church said Wednesday that Sanford tried to have his 10-year-old son baptized there on 21 September and was upset when he was turned down.

Sanford did not threaten staff at the River Church in Goodrich, but he was “frustrated”, Caleb Combs, a pastor, told the AP. “You could see his agitation … He wanted it done.”

Church staff tried to get a grasp of the boy’s belief in Jesus Christ but “came to the conclusion their son was unable to understand what he was doing”, Combs said.

Sanford and his wife did not regularly attend the church, Combs said, but had held an event there 10 years ago to raise money for the boy’s medical care. He was born with a health condition that produced abnormally high levels of insulin.

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For you football fans. 

Effective enforcement and security at the borders, ” Referring to these expenses and its budget. Recommending we put in toll booths to pay for these expenses and take it away from the taxpayers. Over 12000 cars cross the Mexican U.S. border per day.  At $2.00 per car, that’s $24000 dollars a day. Add Canada and that is about the same for another $24000 dollars a day for a total of about $50,000 a 24-hour day.

Plus, think of other jobs created from it. Once all the expenses are paid for, this will eventually be a good source of income and help elevate our national debt. It costs $7.00 just to go over the Golden Gate Bridge. Hello!

Joseph Saraceno

Thanks to pope Leo XIV all the people in the Apocalypse right now are Americans     

  Hopefully Traditionalists will see the light here. 

 Once Paul VI signed the decrees of the Vatican II Council, he became targeted as the AntiChrist. Even Archbishop Lefebvre began to refer to “Rome being occupied by AntiChrists.” (1) My take on this at the time was “he could be if he lives long enough” being a mostly self-taught Biblical scholar I realized the many prophecies had to take place before Christ could come back and all of the Church doctors had the AntiChrist listed as ONE person and NOT a series of them. The same positions were applied with the “False Prophet” I immediately chose the Rev. Billy Graham as the false prophet because he was referred to as a prophet and the church supported him by allowing Catholics to go to his Lectures and he was allowed to preach inside of Catholic Churches. Now I am not going to speculate on who took Rev. Grahams place, but pope Francis had President Biden’s support, so Biden, to me became one of the false prophets.

Well, you guessed it right, nobody had their guesses right on the new pope. I sensed the Cardinals would pull a rabbit out of the hat. After all the last Pope was from South America, why not north America?

In picking Cardinal Robert Prevost they got the support of two countries, the U.S and Peru, and the delight of Hispanics throughout the world since Spanish is the language of Peru.

Yes, the Cardinals even surpassed Hollywood on this one, thank God, there is no act two.

Rafael Perez:  Daily Breeze 4-27-25

On your article, The most impossible task of a pope.

LGBTQ vs. Christ’s words to Mary Magdalene: Go and Sin no more. So, is the Church an opinion factory forcing people to accept its opinions and not reason or truth? Pope Francis is quoted as saying, “Gay lifestyles are O. K. and you can pray to any God you want to.” The most liberal pope in history.

The Pope having to satisfy everyone’s opinions without offending: What happened to the unity of faith?

Do you know what the suicide rate among LBGTQ people is, here are the facts below. (Very high) The Church has always had its doors open for sinners.

Not only that, but society is not conditioned to accept these lifestyles, which gives them a strong tendency to go on to drugs. Not to mention that this is a sinful lifestyle as with fornication and other sinful behavior, means if they die in this state, they are going to spend the rest of their lives in HELL, and I pray you wake up and see the light or you will join all the other fools who fall for Satan’s program.

Joseph Saraceno

17024 S. Western Ave # 8

Gardena, CA. 90247

310-532-2191

• The Trevor Project’s 2023 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ Young People found that 41% of LGBTQ+ young people seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, including roughly half of transgender and nonbinary youth. 

President Donald Trump stated that his newly implemented tariffs are generating nearly $2 billion a day during a Tuesday event in the East Room. This figure includes the baseline 10% tariffs on imports from around the world, which began on Saturday, as well as additional tariffs on steel and aluminum.

Times Now

Just think how fast this could help pay off the national 

dept. I’m sure that’s one of his goals.

Wake up America.