By Rebecca Cook
GRAND BLANC, Michigan (Reuters) -A man crashed his vehicle through the front doors of a Mormon church in Michigan on Sunday and came out firing an assault rifle, killing two people and wounding eight others before dying in a shootout with police, officials said.
The perpetrator, identified as Thomas Jacob Sanford, a 40-year-old man from the nearby town of Burton, also set fire to the church, which was engulfed in flames and billowing smoke.
"We do believe that we will find some additional victims once we find the area where the fire was," Grand Blanc Township Police Chief William Renye told a press conference.
Hundreds of people were inside, Renye said.
Two officers, one from the state Department of Natural Resources and another from Grand Blanc Township, rushed to the scene and engaged the suspect in an exchange of gunfire, shooting him dead, Renye said.
Investigators will search the shooter's home and phone records in search of a motive, Renye said.
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 rampage marked the 324th mass shooting in the U.S. 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.
“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" and said the FBI was on the scene. "THIS EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE IN OUR COUNTRY MUST END, IMMEDIATELY!"
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 60 miles (100 km) northwest of Detroit.
(Reporting by Rebecca Cook in Grand Blanc; Additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien, Daphne Psaldakis and Rachael Levy; Writing by Joseph Tanfani and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Will Dunham, Leslie Adler, Sergio Non, Franklin Paul and Diane Craft)
