At least four were killed and eight wounded after a military veteran rammed a truck into a Mormon church in Michigan, opened fire with an assault rifle, and set the building ablaze. President Trump condemned the atrocity as part of a national epidemic of targeted violence against Christians.
The United States was rocked by yet another wave of terror on Sunday (September 28, 2025) when a gunman launched a coordinated assault on a Mormon church in Grand Blanc, Michigan, killing at least four people and injuring eight others before being gunned down by police.
Authorities said the attacker, identified as Thomas Jacob Sanford, 40, a local military veteran, rammed his truck—flying two U.S. flags—into the side of the church before storming inside with an assault rifle and opening fire. He then set the sanctuary ablaze.
Police Chief William Renye revealed that Sanford was neutralized in the parking lot just eight minutes after the first emergency call, but not before he left the church in ruins. “Two more bodies were recovered in the debris,” Renye confirmed, raising the death toll to four, with search operations still underway.
The FBI has taken control of the investigation, describing the massacre as an act of “targeted violence.”
Images from the scene show the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reduced to ashes, a truck embedded in the wreckage, and stunned survivors recounting chaos as hundreds of worshippers fled for their lives.
President Donald Trump called the assault “horrendous” and a “targeted attack on Christians in the United States of America.” Posting on Truth Social, he thundered: “THIS EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE IN OUR COUNTRY MUST END, IMMEDIATELY!”
The Mormon Church, still mourning the death of its global leader a day earlier, described the massacre as a “tragic act of violence.”
The Michigan attack comes amid a spike in anti-Christian violence across the U.S., including last month’s mass shooting at a Catholic church and school in Minnesota and the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah.
With America polarized, Trump has vowed to crack down on domestic terrorists, warning that radical groups are fueling the bloodshed.
This latest attack underscores how places of worship—once seen as sanctuaries of peace—have become targets in a country confronting what even the President calls a national epidemic of violence.
