Shooter kills at least four, wounds eight at Mormon church in Michigan

GRAND BLANC, Michigan: A man who crashed his vehicle through the front doors of a Mormon church in Michigan opened fire with an assault rifle and set the church ablaze, killing at least four people and wounding at least eight others before dying in a shootout with police, officials said.

Police said the perpetrator, identified as Thomas Jacob Sanford, 40, a former United States Marine from the nearby town of Burton, deliberately set fire to the church on Sunday (Sep 28), which was engulfed in flames and billowing smoke.

Two of the shooting victims died and eight others were hospitalised, officials said. Several hours after the shooting, police reported finding at least two more bodies in the charred remains of the church, which had not yet been cleared and may contain other victims.

"There are some that are unaccounted for," Grand Blanc Township Police Chief William Renye told a press conference.

Hundreds of people were in the church when Sanford drove into the building, Renye said.

Two law enforcement officers, one from the state Department of Natural Resources and another from Grand Blanc Township, rushed to the scene within 30 seconds of receiving calls and engaged the suspect in an exchange of gunfire, shooting him dead in the parking lot about eight minutes after the incident began, Renye said.

Images of the aftermath at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, a suburb of the city of Flint, showed most of the building reduced to ashes.

Photos also showed the truck apparently driven by the attacker into the side of the building, with two US flags on poles in the vehicle's rear.

Investigators will search the shooter's home and phone records in search of a motive, Renye said.

FBI Special Agent Reuben Coleman told the press conference that the FBI was now leading the investigation, and was looking at the attack "as an act of targeted violence".

US military records show Sanford was a US Marine from 2004 to 2008 and an Iraq war veteran.

Coincidentally, another 40-year-old Marine veteran who served in Iraq is a suspect in a North Carolina shooting that killed three people and wounded five others less than 14 hours before the Michigan incident.

Police in Southport, North Carolina, accused Nigel Max Edge of firing on a waterfront bar from a boat on Saturday night. Edge has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder, police said.

According to court records, a federal lawsuit that Edge had filed against the US government and others describes him as a decorated Marine who suffered severe wounds, including traumatic brain injury in Iraq. 

The lawsuit, which was dismissed, showed Edge was previously known as Sean William DeBevoise before changing his name.

"SURREAL" ESCAPE

In Michigan, a woman who gave her name as Paula described her escape as “surreal” in an interview with WXYZ television.

“We heard a big bang and the doors blew. And then everybody rushed out,” she said, adding that there was no security and the shooter opened fire on parishioners as they fled.

“I lost friends in there and some of my little primary children that I teach on Sundays were hurt. It’s very devastating for me," she said.

The Mormons, formally known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, follow the teachings of Jesus but also the prophecies of Joseph Smith, a 19th-century American.

Grand Blanc, a town of 7,700 people, is about 100km northwest of Detroit.

“My heart is breaking for the Grand Blanc community," Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement posted to social media. 

"Violence anywhere, especially in a place of worship, is unacceptable."

President Donald Trump in a statement on Truth Social said that the shooting "appears to be yet another targeted attack on Christians in the United States of America".

"THIS EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE IN OUR COUNTRY MUST END, IMMEDIATELY!"

The Michigan rampage marked the 324th mass shooting in the US in 2025, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks such incidents and describes a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are shot or killed, not including the shooter.

It was also the third US mass shooting in less than 24 hours, including the North Carolina incident and a shooting a few hours later at a casino in Eagle Pass, Texas, that killed at least two people and injured several others.

The US, where firearms are readily available, has a long history of gun violence.

But tensions have soared in recent weeks after a series of high-profile attacks, including the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk in Utah and a deadly shooting at a federal immigration enforcement facility in Texas.

Sunday's attack also comes a month after a mass shooting at a Catholic church and school in Minnesota, in which two children were killed while attending Mass, and several others were severely wounded.

Political divisions have grown even deeper in the wake of the attacks, with Trump launching a campaign to target left-wing groups he accuses of being "domestic terrorists".