Shootings at two religious facilities in Colorado

[JupiterTC]

I was a student at YWAM Denver about a year and a half ago, and I knew Charlie. Tiffany and Dan were completing another school while I was on outreach. I know several current and former staff members who are grieving right now.

Just to clarify, Youth With A Mission is not a church. It is a non-denominational missions organization with bases all over the world. There are at least two bases in Colorado: one in Arvada and the other in Colorado Springs. Though they both operate as YWAM, they are actually independent from each other (as are all YWAM bases). I was under the impression that YWAM Colorado Springs had an office at New Life church, but I think the media says that YWAM Arvada as an office there. At any rate, a lot of YWAM bases team up with local church ministries to moblize people into missions.

My first thought when I found out about this was that the shooter is a bitter YWAMer. Unfortunately, my inclination was correct.

[DeltAlum]

Originally Posted by JupiterTC

Just to clarify...

Thanks for that. A little clarity is certainly needed.

The Arvada Chief of Police announced late this afternoon that ballistic evidence links the alleged shooter to both crimes.

To add to the strange circumstances, a local pastor is the uncle of the evident murderer.

Local early Denver newscasts were really remarkable, with the head of YWAM internationally giving a dramatic live statement, then introducing the uncle who made a heart-wrenching comment on behalf of the shooters family.

That was followed by news conference comments of the security guard, who says she has a law enforcement background but offered no details. Her comments were also impactful as she described taking cover until the gunman got close -- then leaving her cover to confront him. She said (paraphrasing) that she knew what she had to do and asked the "Holy Spirit" for help and took down the suspect and has no regret. She spoke of being "protected" as she faced the young man with an automatic weapon armed with only a handgun herself.

This is the stuff of which movies (or legends) are made. The volunteer security officer is a rather striking blonde woman who spoke with remarkable confidence.

The alleged murderer apparantely set off several smoke bombs and had more than one weapon and around a thousand rounds of ammunition for them.

The pastor of the Colorado Springs church says that the security guard may have saved "hundreds" of lives. There reportedly may have been as many as seven thousand people leaving the church at the time of the shooting.

The two victims killed in the Springs were sisters, and their father was also shot and is in stable condition.

Besides the two police agencies, the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are working on the investigation. The head of YWAM thanked both communities and the Arvada Police especially for providing victim assistance counselors -- as well as local churches not involved in the tragedies for their support.

As seems to be so common in these situations, the alleged gunman was described as a "loner."

[GeekyPenguin]

http://www.startribune.com/local/12356581.html

There's an article on the background of the woman who ended up shooting the shooter - apparently she was fired from the Minneapolis police force for lying.

[DeltAlum]

According to news reports, she was fired after she allegedly lied during an internal investigation into whether she swore at someone while on duty.

If that's all there is to the story, I'll give her a break.

As the Colorado Springs pastor said, that was a long time ago.

I think her actions last weekend overshadow that -- even though it is now said that the gunman killed himself. In the end, she reportedly did face off against a guy with an automatic weapon and did shoot him several times.

It's also reported that there were two other armed security guards there who took no action. A man who was slightly injured by a bullet fragment who says he is a Vietnam veteran claims that he asked one of the other guards to give him their weapon so he could shoot the gunman. He has high praise for the former police officer.

One of the sidebar stories in today's Rocky Mountain News quoted a number of pastors (including our daughter and son-in-law's pastor) about having armed security people. One of the things brought up was the liability -- which I mentioned in a post above. It has to be huge.