4 Dead, 8 Wounded in Twin Church Shootings in Colorado

Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 1:03 am

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,316263,00.html

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A gunman shot four staff members at a missionary training center near Denver early Sunday, killing two, after being told he couldn't spend the night. About 12 hours later and 65 miles away in Colorado Springs, a gunman fatally shot a parishioner at a megachurch and wounded four other people before a guard killed him, police said.

The police chief in Arvada, a suburb about 15 miles west of Denver where the mission workers were shot, said the shootings may be related to those in Colorado Springs but declined to elaborate. No one had been captured in the Arvada shootings, authorities said.

Late Sunday, Arvada police helped Colorado Springs serve a search warrant at a home in suburban Englewood, about 15 miles south of Denver, that they said could be related to the Colorado Springs shooting case.

"Colorado Springs has identified its suspect, and we're there to see whether their suspect and ours are the same," said Arvada Deputy Police Chief Gary Creagor.

Witness descriptions differed in each incident. A handgun was used in the shootings at the Youth With a Mission center in Arvada, while a rifle was used at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, police said.

The gunman at the New Life Church was shot and killed by a church security guard after entering the church's main foyer with high-powered rifle shortly before 1 p.m. and opening fire, Colorado Springs Police Chief Richard Myers said. Four others were wounded, Myers said.

The church's 11 a.m. service had recently ended, and hundreds of people were milling about when the gunman opened fire. Nearby were parents picking up their children from the nursery.

Police arrived to find that the gunman had been killed by a member of the church's armed security staff, Myers said.

"There was a courageous staff member who probably saved many lives here today," Myers said.

Gov. Bill Ritter ordered state authorities to help investigate. The FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were assisting. Officers found several smoke-generating devices on the church campus, Myers said. Their intended purpose wasn't clear.

Three of the injured were taken to Penrose Community Hospital in Colorado Springs, said hospital spokeswoman Amy Sufak. One person was in critical condition and another in fair condition. The third was treated and released, and the fourth was treated at the scene of the shooting, Myers said.

New Life was founded by the Rev. Ted Haggard, who was fired last year after a former male prostitute alleged he had a three-year cash-for-sex relationship with him. Haggard, then the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, admitted committing undisclosed "sexual immorality."

The New Life church is one of Colorado's largest with about 10,000 members. The mission training program in Arvada does have a small office on the Colorado Springs church campus.

About 7,000 people were on the Colorado Springs campus at the time of the shooting, Senior Pastor Brady Boyd said. Security at the church had been beefed up after the early morning shootings in Arvada, he said.

That shooting happened at about 12:30 a.m. at the Youth With a Mission center in Arvada, a Denver suburb, police spokeswoman Susan Medina said.

A man and a woman were killed and two men were wounded, Medina said. All four were staff members of the center, said Paul Filidis, a Colorado Springs-based spokesman with Youth With a Mission.

Arvada Police Chief Don Wick, asked whether he believed there was reason to think the shootings are related, responded, "Yes, there is reason to believe that."

Wick said the suspect spent several minutes speaking with people inside the dorm. Peter Warren, director of Youth With a Mission Denver, said the man asked whether he could spend the night. Several youths called on Tiffany Johnson, the center's director of hospitality.

"The director of hospitality was called. That's when he opened fire," Warren said. Johnson, 26, was killed.

Warren said he didn't know whether any of the students or staff knew the gunman. "We don't know why" he came to the dormitory, Warren said.

Witnesses told police that the gunman was a 20-year-old white male, wearing a dark jacket and skull cap, who had a handgun and left on foot. He may have glasses or a beard.

Police with dogs searched the area through the night, and residents of nearby homes were notified by reverse 911 to be on the lookout. Medina said residents were asked to look out their windows for any tracks left in the snow during the night. About 4 inches of snow had fallen in the area in the past day.

In addition to Johnson, killed in Arvada was Philip Crouse, 24. Youth With a Mission said Johnson was from Minnesota and Crouse was from Alaska.

The missionary center identified the wounded as Dan Griebenow, 24, of South Dakota, and Charlie Blanch, 22, whose hometown wasn't immediately known. One of the men was in critical condition, and the other was stable, police said.

The missionary center is on the grounds of the Faith Bible Chapel. Cheril Morrison, wife of chapel pastor George Morrison, said Crouse had just hung up Christmas lights at her home and that Johnson was "an amazingly beautiful person."

Mimi Martin, who lives near the center, said she received the warning call at about 9 a.m. warning neighbors to keep their doors and windows locked.

"Why would anybody want to hurt those kids?" Martin said.

Darv Smith, director of a Youth With a Mission center in Boulder, said people ranging from their late teens to their 70s undergo a 12-week course that prepares them to be missionaries. He said the center trains about 300 people a year.

Filidis said staffers are usually former missionaries themselves and that the "mercy ministries" performed by trainees include orphanage work. He said he didn't know where the group being trained in Arvada was going to be sent.

Youth With a Mission was started in 1960 and now has 1,100 locations with 16,000 full-time staff, Smith said. The Arvada center was founded in 1984.

Please pray for our brothers and sisters Crying or Very sad

Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 11:44 am

Colo. church gunman had been kicked out

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071211/ap_on_re_us/church_shootings&printer=1;_ylt=AsXOGFL7HSG7jbIxLmEcsOlH2ocA

The gunman believed to have killed four people at a megachurch and a missionary training school had been thrown out of the school a few years ago and had been sending it hate mail, police said in court papers Monday.

The gunman was identified as Matthew Murray, 24, who was home-schooled in what a friend said was a deeply religious Christian household. Murray's father is a neurologist and a leading multiple-sclerosis researcher.
Five people — including Murray — were killed, and five others wounded Sunday in the two eruptions of violence 12 hours and 65 miles apart.
The first attack took place at Youth With a Mission, a training center for missionaries in the Denver suburb of Arvada; the other occurred at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where Murray was shot by a security guard, though investigators said he may have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
"Through both investigations it has been determined that most likely the suspect in both shootings are one in the same," police said in court papers.
Colorado Springs police said the "common denominator in both locations" was Youth With a Mission. The training center maintains an office at the 10,000-member church.
"It appears that the suspect had been kicked out of the program three years prior and during the past few weeks had sent different forms of hate mail to the program and-or its director," police said.
KUSA-TV in Denver reported Monday that Murray posted several rants on a Web site for people who have left evangelical religious groups. The most recent post was on Sunday morning.
According to the station, which did not identify the site, Murray wrote, "You Christians brought this on yourselves" and "All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you ... as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world."
The station said Murray's posts were removed from the site after Sunday's killings, and that authorities were aware of them and investigating.
Police in Colorado Springs were not immediately available for comment on the writings. An Arvada police spokeswoman said she had no specific information about them.
Murray's relatives said they were grief-stricken and baffled.
"Our family cannot express the magnitude of our grief for the victims and families of this tragedy. On behalf of our family, and our son, we ask for forgiveness. We cannot understand why this has happened," they said in a statement read by the gunman's uncle, Phil Abeyta, who fought back tears.
In a statement, the training center said health problems kept Murray from finishing the program but elaborated little. Murray did not complete the lecture phase or a field assignment as part of a 12-week program, Youth With a Mission said.
"The program directors felt that issues with his health made it inappropriate for him to" finish, it said.
Police gave no immediate details on the hate mail. And the training center said that Murray left in 2002 — five years ago, not three — and that no one there can recall any visits or other communication from him since then.
Earlier Monday, a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said it appeared Murray "hated Christians."
Investigators have not said whether Murray singled out his victims. But the two people killed at the church — sisters Stephanie and Rachael Works, ages 18 and 16 — frequented the training center, their uncle Mark Schaepe of Lincoln, Neb., told The Gazette of Colorado Springs.
The two people killed at the missionary center were identified as Tiffany Johnson, 26, and Philip Crouse, 24.
Authorities searched the Murray house on a quiet street in Englewood on Monday for guns, ammunition and computers. No one was home when a reporter visited the split-level brick home early Monday. Murray's father, Ronald S. Murray, is chief executive of the Rocky Mountain Multiple Sclerosis Center in Englewood.
Matthew Murray lived there along with a brother, Christopher, 21, a student at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla. In a search warrant affidavit, investigators said Matthew Murray attended a home-based computer school and had worked at his computer for three to five hours a day for the past two years.
A neighbor, Cody Askeland, 19, said the brothers were home-schooled, describing the whole family as "very, very religious."
Christopher studied for a semester at Colorado Christian University before transferring to Oral Roberts, said Ronald Rex, dean of admissions and marketing at Colorado Christian. He said Matthew Murray had been in contact with school officials this summer about attending the school but decided he wasn't interested because he thought the school was too expensive.
Police said Murray's only previous brush with the law was a traffic ticket earlier this year.
The gunman opened fire at 12:30 a.m. at Youth With a Mission. Witnesses said he asked to spend the night there and opened fire with a handgun when he was turned down. They described him as a young man, perhaps 20, in a dark jacket and cap.
Later, at New Life Church, a gunman wearing a trench coat and carrying a high-powered rifle opened fire in the parking lot and later walked into the church as a service was letting out.
Jeanne Assam, a church member who volunteers as a security guard, shot Murray, who was found with a rifle and two handguns, police said.
"It seemed like it was me, the gunman and God," said Assam, whose hands trembled a little as she recounted the shooting during a news conference Monday.
Assam is a former police officer who worked in Minneapolis during the 1990s, Minneapolis police Sgt. Jesse Garcia said. Garcia said Monday night that he didn't know the exact dates of her employment with the force and couldn't comment on why she left.
New Life, with a largely upper middle-class membership, was founded by the Rev. Ted Haggard, who was dismissed last year after a former male prostitute alleged a relationship with him. Haggard admitted committing unspecified "sexual immorality."
Youth With a Mission was started in 1960 and has 1,100 locations with 16,000 full-time staff, said Darv Smith, director of a Youth With a Mission center in Boulder.