The gunman, who Vestavia Hills Police Captain Shane Ware said is white, is in custody at the Vestavia Hills Police Department on Friday and is expected to be charged with capital murder
A 71-year-old Alabama man attending a church potluck dinner for elderly parishioners on Thursday evening suddenly pulled out a handgun and started firing, killing two people until a churchgoer heroically subdued him, police said Friday.
The gunman, who has not been publicly identified, was an “occasional attendee” at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Vestavia Hills, a suburban community on the outskirts of Birmingham that is rated one of the safest in Alabama. “The suspect has previously attend services at this church but as far as the motive behind this event, it is still being looked into,” Vestavia Hills Police Captain Shane Ware said at a Friday morning briefing.
Ware identified the two victims as 84-year-old Walter Rainey and 75-year-old Sarah Yeager. A third person, an 84-year-old woman, was being treated at a hospital for injuries.reported. At 6:22 p.m., mid-way through the dinner, police received 911 calls about an active shooter.Ware said an attendee managed to subdue the gunman and hold him down until police arrived.
Police believe the gunman acted alone. In the initial panic after the shooting, Kelley Hudlow of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama, who was in a staging area the police set up just across the street from the church, told The Daily Beast that she believed the shooter was “not somebody that was known” to the church or the diocese.
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