- Four died, as well as the gunman, when violence tore through a Sunday service
- First responders and community gathering places — schools and churches — prepare for such attacks — and then hope
- ‘Everybody says, believes it won’t happen here, until it does,’ says one fire chief
GRAND BLANC — A marquee at Grand Blanc High School on Monday read: “WeAre#GB.”
This tight-knit community on Sunday was added to a growing list of American suburbs and cities where the unthinkable happened.
On Monday, the community continued to mournSunday’s shooting at a Grand Blanc Township church that left four congregants dead and several others wounded. They searched for signs of hope.
They called it evil. And often, words didn’t come.
“This is an evil act and does not define Grand Blanc,” Grand Blanc Township Police Chief William Renye said at a press conference Monday.
“It has to be a great evil to attack a church,” Burton Councilperson Christina Fitchett-Hickson said Monday.
The gunman, identified as a Burton resident, rammed his truck into the front doors of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints just before 10:30 a.m. Sunday, opened fire on the congregants and — using an accelerant — set the building on fire.
He killed at least four and injured several others before police killed him in a shootout at the scene. Later, police — still trying to determine a motive — blocked off a section of Atherton Road near Sanford’s listed address for hours. A bomb squad unit and other law enforcement continued to investigate the property late into the evening.
As morning broke Monday, police crews and barricades still surrounded the wreckage of the church, and the smell lingered from the thick smoke that had filled the sky during what should have been a church service.
“We are shattered,” said Amanda Oakman, 44.
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She and a friend were driving by the church Sunday when they spotted what appeared to have been a ghastly accident in a church in the center of a “quiet neighborhood, quaint neighborhood,” she told Bridge Michigan.
But the driver exited the truck, and she saw him draw a weapon. Gunfire. Chaos.
“Surreal,” she said Monday. “This is a safe community. There is a sense of security.”
She punched in 911.
“I’m feeding them information. You never think this will happen to you,” she said.
She choked on the last word, adding more quietly: “You don’t forget something like that.”
About that time, Bridget Accetta, owner of Ms. Bridget’s School of Dance in nearby Fenton, was startled to see that a GoFundMe site her daughter had set up Sunday had surpassed its $1,000 goal overnight to support recovery for one of the school’s young dancers and her two parents — all three injured in the attack.
She’s a quiet little girl, Accetta said. She does everything she’s supposed to, and her family initially tried to turn down the money.
The mother “told me that there are others who need it more,” Accetta said.
The fundraiser had passed its $2,500 goal by mid-morning.
By dinnertime, it had topped $3,300.
Someone called Accetta, who said a handful of the families involved in the school were victims or connected to victims of the attack. The caller wanted to anonymously pay for some of the children’s lessons, Accetta said.
In times like these, Accetta said, everyone wants to do something — “even if it’s paying for dinner, anything that can make life a little easier,” she said.
She worries about the coming days.
“I feel so bad for these kids. What do you say to a child? I guess I just hug them,” she said.
Back in Grand Blanc Township, about seven miles south of Flint, flags had been drawn down to half staff by Monday. Grand Blanc Township and Grand Blanc have a combined population of 46,500.
They are two of a group of jurisdictions knitted so tightly that many of its residents see them as one, said Genesee County Commissioner Brian Flewelling.
On Monday, Flewelling, like others, struggled to find words. As fire chief of nearby Davison, he was among the first responders from departments from around Genesee and Oakland counties — towns of high school football rivalries and deep roots.
Grand Blanc communities, he said, may have a higher tax base than much of nearby Davison, while Davison has more farmland.
But the differences end there, he said.
“We are hardworking families that love God and community,” he said.
Sunday sparkled in a way that Michigan does in the fall: brilliant blue skies, roadways lined with purples and yellows, and the trees tinged with autumn golds.
Flewelling was weed-whacking and doing other chores at the Davison firehouse when one of the crew rushed toward him.
“Did you hear the call?” he said.
Within minutes, Flewelling and four other firefighters were on their way to the already collapsed building. They didn’t ask questions of the crews already there.
“We understand the potential trauma of the first crews. We put our head down, go in and focus,” he said.
Services were just wrapping up at nearby First Baptist Church of Holly just after 11:30 a.m. when an usher announced the shooting.
Among the congregants,Debi and Martin Contino, parents of a toddler boy, went home to grab bottled water, applesauce, fruit snacks — “whatever we had on hand,” Debi Contino said — to deliver them to emergency crews. They arrived at the caution tape as the sun began to set.
It’s part of their fight against the growing violence in the world. A little kindnesses can make a difference in the end, they believe.
“We need a love epidemic. It doesn’t mean you have to, like, agree with everything people say, but if you just love people and see the humanity …,” Debi Contino, 39, said, her voice trailing away.
US Sen. Elissa Slotkin — a Democrat whose Holly farm is located just a few miles away from the tragedy — and other local leaders met with law enforcement Monday morning for a briefing on the shooting and subsequent fire.
Slotkin, Democratic US Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet and Republican state Reps. Mike Mueller and David Martin, all of whom represent the region, urged the public to stand in solidarity with victims and condemn violence without devolving into political divisiveness.
“I live just down the street … it’s where I come to eat and where I come to visit and drive by every day,” Slotkin told reporters outside the Grand Blanc Township police station. “It doesn’t matter what party you’re from, this kind of thing just chills you to the bone.”
The leaders said they had not yet met with members of the church or families of the victims, but planned to in the coming days.
In the meantime, Slotkin said, the main focus is to lower the political temperature.
“I think there’ll be plenty of time for people to say what they want, to say the lessons learned out of this incident,” Slotkin said. “But for now, given the context and how many of these incidents have happened just over the past month across the country, we thought it was important to come together and say, ‘We’re not going to make this a political football.’
“This is a community in pain, and we as leaders are here to try and calm people’s nerves, not spin it up with conspiracy theories,” she continued.
On Monday, Oakman, who’d called 911, drove to her job as an operations manager, knowing she probably wouldn’t be able to focus.
Still, she said, “It’s better than sitting at home watching everyone’s vehicles up and down our street.”
And there’s a new realization, she said:
Her neighbors: Theirs was a false sense of security, she said.
“Everybody there, it has just shattered everybody.”
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