By Rebecca Cook, Joseph Ax and Andrew Hay
GRAND BLANC TOWNSHIP, Michigan (Reuters) -A weekend attack on Mormon churchgoers in Michigan was a targeted act of violence, with evidence suggesting religious hatred drove an ex-Marine to crash his truck into a house of worship before unleashing a deadly storm of gunfire and arson, officials said on Monday.
Four people were killed and eight others were wounded in the rampage, which unfolded during Sunday morning services at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints meetinghouse in Grand Blanc Township, about 60 miles (97 km) northwest of Detroit, according to police.
The suspect, identified as Thomas Jacob Sanford, 40, from the nearby town of Burton, was shot dead in a parking lot outside the building about eight minutes after the carnage began, police said.
U.S. military records show Sanford was an Iraq War veteran who served in the Marine Corps from 2004 to 2008. Police and other officials speaking at a news conference on Monday made little else public about Sanford's background.
Township Police Chief William Renye said Sanford had been arrested in the past but did not elaborate.
"The FBI is investigating this as an act of targeted violence, and we are continuing to work to determine a motive," said Reuben Coleman, the acting special agent-in-charge of the FBI's Detroit field office.
RELIGIOUS BIAS AGAINST MORMONS
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" program earlier on Monday that she had recently spoken with FBI Director Kash Patel about the attack. She indicated that evidence pointed to a religious bias against the Mormon faith, formally known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
"All they know right now is this was an individual who hated people of the Mormon faith, and they are trying to understand more about this, how premeditated it was, how much planning went into it, whether he left a note," she said.
Hundreds of people were inside the meetinghouse - the Mormon faith's term for the place of worship they most often use - when the suspect rammed his pickup truck into the front doors of the building. Officials said he then sprayed the interior with a barrage of gunfire before deliberately setting the building ablaze.
Two victims were found shot to death, and two other bodies were discovered hours later in the charred ruins left of the building. Authorities had said late on Sunday they feared that additional remains might turn up.
But at Monday's news briefing, Renye said the death toll remained at four and that everyone else who was at the services had been accounted for.
The Detroit Free Press quoted a Burton City Council candidate, Kris Johns, as saying he had spoken with Sanford about a week ago, and that the suspect described members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as "the antichrist."
Johns told the newspaper that the two men did not discuss politics but that he had seen a campaign sign for President Donald Trump on the suspect's fence. An image from Google Maps also shows a Trump sign at an address listed online as the suspect's residence.
Sanford's animosity toward the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stemmed from his breakup with a deeply religious girlfriend of the Mormon faith more than a decade ago, The New York Times reported, citing two lifelong friends and other people who knew him.
Separately on Monday, a 21-year-old man was taken into custody after driving his car through a barricade that had been set up near the gutted meetinghouse. The police chief said authorities were still investigating whether that incident was related to Sunday's attack.
SPATE OF MASS SHOOTINGS
The Michigan violence came a month after a gunman fired through the stained-glass windows of a Catholic church in Minneapolis, killing two children and wounding 17 other people.
Sunday's assault marked the 324th mass shooting in the U.S. in 2025, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks shootings in which four or more people are shot or killed, not including the shooter.
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.
A federal lawsuit that Edge had filed against the U.S. government and others described him as a decorated Marine who suffered severe wounds in Iraq, including traumatic brain injury. The lawsuit, which was dismissed, showed Edge was previously known as Sean William DeBevoise before changing his name.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, based in Utah, follows the teachings of Jesus but also the prophecies of Joseph Smith, a 19th-century American who published the faith's earliest religious text, the Book of Mormon, in 1830.
"Places of worship are meant to be sanctuaries of peacemaking, prayer and connection," Doug Andersen, a church spokesman, said in a statement. "We pray for peace and healing for all involved."
(Reporting by Rebecca Cook in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan, Joseph Ax in New York and Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Writing by Joseph Ax, Daniel Trotta and Steve Gorman; Editing by Frank McGurty, Bill Berkrot, Nick Zieminski and Stephen Coates)
