Gunman opens fire at Tennessee church, killing 2

Monday 28th July, 04:54 AM JST

KNOXVILLE, Tennessee —

A gunman opened fire at a church youth performance Sunday and killed two people, including a man who witnesses called a hero for shielding others from a shotgun blast.

Seven adults were also injured but no children were harmed at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. Church members said they dove under pews or ran from the building when the shooting started.

The gunman was tackled by congregants and eventually taken into police custody.

Jim D Adkisson, 58, was charged with first-degree murder and was being held on $1 million bail, according to city spokesman Randy Kenner, who did not know if the suspect had retained an attorney. Authorities were searching Adkisson’s home in the Knoxville bedroom community of Powell, Kenner said.

The man slain was identified as Greg McKendry, 60, a longtime church member and usher. Church member Barbara Kemper told The Associated Press that McKendry “stood in the front of the gunman and took the blast to protect the rest of us.”

Linda Kreager, 61, died at the University of Tennessee Medical Center a few hours after the shooting, Knoxville city spokesman Randall Kenner said.

Five people remained hospitalized, all in critical or serious condition. Two others were treated and released.

The gunman’s motive is not yet known. The church, like many other Unitarian Universalist churches, promotes progressive social work, such as desegregation and fighting for the rights of women and gays. The Knoxville congregation has provided sanctuary for political refugees, fed the homeless and founded a chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, according to its Web site.

Kemper said the gunman shouted before he opened fire.

“It was hateful words. He was saying hateful things,” she said, but refused to elaborate.

The FBI was assisting in the case in case it turns out be a hate crime, Police Chief Sterling Owen said. Police were taking statements from witnesses and collecting video cameras from church members who taped the performance.

There were about 200 people watching a performance by 25 children based on the musical “Annie” when the shooting took place.

Church member Mark Harmon said he was in the first row. “It had barely begun when there was an incredibly loud bang,” he said.

Harmon said he thought the noise was part of the play, then he heard a second loud bang. As he dove for cover, he realized a woman behind him was bleeding. She looked like she was in shock, touching her wound, he said.

“It seems so unreal,” Harmon said. “You’re sitting in church, you’re watching a children’s performance of a play and suddenly you hear a bang.”

Harmon said church members just behind him in the second and third rows were shot. His wife told him that she saw the gunman pull the shotgun out of a guitar case.

Witnesses reported hearing about three blasts from the .12-gauge shotgun, which spreads pellets out when the shot leaves the barrel. Witnesses said they did not recognize the gunman.

Church members said the gunman was tackled by John Bohstedt, who played “Daddy Warbucks” in the performance. He declined comment when reached by phone at his home.

Friends of McKendry said he was friendly with everyone.

“Greg McKendry was a very large gentlemen, one of those people you might describe as a refrigerator with a head,” said member Schera Chadwick, whose husband, Ted Lollis, arrived at the church just after the shooting. “He looked like a football player. He did obviously stand up and put himself in between the shooter and the congregation.”

McKendry and his wife had recently taken in a foster child.

The church’s minister was on vacation in western North Carolina at the time of the shooting but returned Sunday afternoon.

“We’ve been touched by a horrible act of violence. We are in a process of healing and we ask everyone for your prayers,” the Rev Chris Buice said in a statement outside the church. “I will tell you we love Greg McKendry. We are grieving the loss of a wonderful man.”

___

Associated Press writers Beth Rucker in Knoxville and Cara Rubinsky and Anna Varela in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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Latest 15 of 19 Total Comments Show All

Zen_Builder at 02:34 PM JST - 28th July

I feel sorry for the victims, their families and the by-standers.

Glad only 2 died.
cleo at 03:37 PM JST - 28th July

Hey, how about some anger management lessons, or easily accessable therapists. People have pent up rage and can`t control themselves.

Or maybe things are different across the water and we're not supposed to suggest that the killer was a looney.

The FBI are involved 'in case it turns out be a hate crime'. Is that different from an anger crime?

As with all senseless crimes where lives are lost, thoughts are with the deceased and their families, and with those who were injured.
sdmsec at 03:40 PM JST - 28th July

Thank goodness he didn't wait until everyone was exiting and plow into them with a large truck. It would have been much more devistating and harder to stop.
JoeBigs at 09:09 PM JST - 28th July

Sad but an every day part of living in Gun happy America....
SezWho2 at 11:01 PM JST - 28th July

So far no one seems to have mentioned that this wouldn't have happened if everyone at church had been carrying guns.
adaydream at 12:08 AM JST - 29th July

So he has a 4 page letter and he's blaming the Liberals for not getting a job.

Blaming the Liberals and then killing innocent people.

This is a real pity. < :-)
Betzee at 10:24 AM JST - 29th July

The FBI are involved 'in case it turns out be a hate crime'. Is that different from an anger crime?

Cleo,

A hate crime is one in which the perpetrator targets a particular group, say gays or some ethnic minority. Here the man identified himself as "hating liberals" so he sought out his victims in a church identified with liberal causes. Had his anger motivated him to go into the nearest fast food restaurant and open fire it wouldn't be classified as a "hate crime."
cleo at 10:34 AM JST - 29th July

Betzee -

OK, I see. It doesn't change the fact that he's a looney killing innocent people for no sane reason....right?
Betzee at 10:39 AM JST - 29th July

That's right, the perpetrator's mental state of mind is not an issue; it's simply a question of whether his victims were selected intentionally or were people going about their business who happened to in the wrong place at the wrong time, in other words they were random victims of deadly violence.
Betzee at 11:04 AM JST - 29th July

Cleo,

I don't know when this distinction entered into law, but it's relatively recent. It could be groups who felt they had been historically victimized pressed to have harsher penalties imposed on those who were found to have been motivated by prejudice. For example, the two guys who murdered Matthew Shepard, a gay young man in Wyoming whom they met in a bar, were covicted of a "hate crime."

Usually victims are selected based on their "ascriptive characteristics, i.e., their appearance, be it skin pigmentation or male effeteness. I haven't heard of many victims targeted for their freely chosen political beliefs, but I'm not surprised to learn that was the motivation either.
SezWho2 at 11:27 AM JST - 29th July

The ACLU, incidentally, takes no position on gun control although it does believe that the Supreme Court erred in its recent decision which held that the 2nd amendment was an individual right instead of a collective one.
JoeBigs at 11:34 AM JST - 29th July

Gee wiz SezWho2 if everyone in church had a gun then there would have been a lot more dead. Everyone would have opened up on each other!LOL Instead of 2 there would have been 20!!! LOL
SezWho2 at 04:01 PM JST - 29th July

JoeBigs,

Yes, that's my point. When you consider the argument that if every student at Virginia Tech had had a gun there would have been fewer people killed and then apply that to a church, it sounds quite different, don't you think?
Sarge at 10:48 PM JST - 29th July

SezWho2 - "So far no one seems to have mentioned that this wouldn't have happened if everyone at the church was carrying guns."

That's because no one is that stupid.
SezWho2 at 11:53 PM JST - 29th July

Sarge,

Yes, that's right. It's entirely different when it's a church, isn't it?