Posted on 12/10/2007 4:34:33 PM PST by Reagan Man
A frustrated would-be missionary kicked out of a youth program three years ago sought revenge Sunday night by killing four people in Arvada and Colorado Springs, court papers say.
Matthew J. Murray, 24, of Englewood, was shot several times and killed in the lobby of New Life Church by a security guard, Jeanne Assam, 42, Sunday afternoon after he took the lives of two sisters and wounded their father and two others, authorities say. That was 12 hours after he had opened fire at Youth With a Mission in Arvada, killing two people, Colorado Springs police said in an affidavit supporting the issuance of a search warrant for Murray’s home.
Police said this evening that forensic evidence positively linked Murray to both crimes.
The affidavit describes Murray as a computer student who spent as many as five hours a day at the keyboard for the past two years. It doesn’t describe what fueled his apparent recent rage at the missionary program. His only prior brush with police was a traffic ticket in Castle Rock earlier this year, court records show.
“The common denominator in both locations is a church-based group called Youth With a Mission,” Detective Bradley Pratt wrote in court papers. “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.”
A backpack worn by Murray held 1,000 rounds of ammunition for the rifle and two pistols he was carrying and several smoke grenades, police said.
The New Life Church shooting tore apart a close-knit and deeply religious family, killing two of four teenage children and wounding the father, relatives said today.
The dead are 18-year-old Stephanie Works and her sister, 16-year-old Rachael Works. They were described by their uncle, Mark Schaepe of Lincoln, Neb, as outgoing cheerful, faithful and smart.
“It teaches you that life is precious,” he said.
The Works sisters are survived by their parents of Denver, David Works, who was shot twice in the attack and remained hospitalized in fair condition; and Marie Works, along with two sisters.
Murray opened fire on the Works family as they piled into their car to leave the church after the service.
The other victims of Sunday’s shootings include:
-Judy Purcell, 40, who suffered a gunshot wound to the right shoulder. She was shot in the shoulder as Murray blazed across the parking lot toward the church, police said. She was treated at Penrose Hospital and released.
-Larry Bourbannais, 59, who suffered a gunshot wound to the left forearm. Bourbannais was inside the building and diving for cover when Murray shot him, police said. Bourbannais was also treated and released.
Murray’s attack on New Life was complex, police said, and included several smoke grenades near entrances to the worship center, as well as gunfire.
Assam, a volunteer security guard with police training, said she heard the shooting and encountered Murray in the foyer of New Life’s worship center and fired several pistol shots, killing him.
“I took cover and I waited for him to get closer,” Assam said today. “I identified myself and I engaged him and took him down.”
“It seemed like it was me, the gunman and God,” she said.
Police agencies started swarming the Murray home in the 10900 block of East Berry Place before noon Sunday and searched until before dawn today.
Officers were seeking guns, ammunition and computers, police wrote in the warrant that was signed by a 4th Judicial District judge.
Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson said his agency’s bomb squad was dispatched to the home about 7:15 Sunday night. He said his agency was supporting Arvada and Colorado Springs police who were executing a search warrant at the house. Police took several boxes of items from the brick and stucco tri-level home amid a neighborhood of large houses separated by mature landscape.
Arvada Police Chief Don Wick said there are no indications that Murray had help, saying, “We are confident the person responsible for the shootings has been identified.”
“This is a quiet neighborhood,” said a neighbor of the Murrays who declined to identify herself. “It’s a great place to raise kids.”
Another neighbor, 19-year-old Cody Askeland, told The Associated Press that Matthew Murray and his brother, Christopher, were home-schooled and their family was “very, very religious.”
Police finished searching the house early today and seized several items.
No one appeared home at the Murray house, which still had the Monday newspapers with stories of the shootings sitting on the driveway.
The owner of the home and Murray’s father, neurosurgeon Ronald Murray, left his Lone Tree medical office closed Monday morning.
“Dr. Murray’s office is closed and he will not be available until further notice,” a phone recording said.
Earlier Monday, New Life Pastor Brady Boyd said church officials considered the attack on New Life a random act.
“We don’t know the shooter. He has no connection to our church,” he said.
Schaepe said family members suspect that the shooter could have targeted the girls because they were involved heavily with Youth With a Mission and had frequented the Arvada training center for the missionary group where two people were shot to death hours before the New Life attack.
The girls had gone on a mission trip to China with Youth With a Mission last year, Schaepe said.
The search warrant doesn’t say whether any of the victims could have been specifically targeted.
Boyd said he’s most concerned for “the family that lost two teenage daughters.”
“You can imagine what the parents are going through, losing two children by coming to church,” he said. “I’m asking Colorado Springs and the country, please pray for that family because they’re going through a hard time.”
Schaepe said the Works family, which moved to Denver from Montana in the mid-1990s, is deeply religious and home-schooled the four girls.
He said the family gravitated to New Life and had become heavily involved in church life. “They felt at home in that particular group,” he said.
Schaepe said he hadn’t talked to the girls’ mother, Marie, but said family members were on the way from Nebraska to stay with her and the surviving children.
An official at the Dayton Meadows Apartments in Aurora, where the Works live, declined to answer questions about the family and asked media to leave the property today. The complex, a series of three-floor brick-and-wood buildings with a sign advertising “Two Bedrooms Free Rent” in an apartment-heavy area, sat quiet on Monday morning.
Boyd said Assam was a “hero” whose actions had averted further bloodshed. He said she is normally his personal security guard, but on Sunday was stationed in the middle of a church rotunda, on the lookout for danger following reports of the shoootings at the Christian ministry near Denver earlier in the day.
Assam has a background in law enforcement but is not currently a law enforcement officer. Assam said her Christian faith gave her the willpower to face down the heavily-armed Murray.
“I didn’t think for a minute to run away,” she said.
Fourth Judicial District Attorney John Newsome, in a statement released today, said that shots fired by the guard appeared to “not only be appropriate, but also justified under Colorado law.” He said that his office is still reviewing the incident.
Boyd said 15-20 volunteer church members regularly work as security guards on New Life’s 38-acre campus. The church has had an emergency response and evacuation plan in place for several years, he said.
“That’s the reality of our world. None of us grew up in a church where that was a reality, but today it is,” he said.
Boyd said the church might have been a target because of its high profile in the city, adding there might be some connection with the ousting last year of founder and former pastor Ted Haggard.
Boyd said he had visited and prayed with the victims' family in the hospital.
Woodmen Valley Chapel, another large church in Colorado Springs, offered crisis counseling for people who are distraught over the shootings. The counseling is available at the church’s Rockrimmon Campus Community Center, 290 E. Woodmen Road. For details, call 599-8652.
“Obviously the trauma that happened yesterday will take a long time to get through,” Boyd said. “But this is a strong church.”
Staff writers Perry Swanson, Andrea Brown, Ed Sealover, Jennifer Wilson and Dennis Huspeni contributed to this report.
Wow. Very Impressive
“I was asking the Holy Spirit to guide me the entire time.”
Like the sniper in “Private Ryan” who prayed as he took aim at his target.
That traitor Adam Gadahn goes by the name “Assam the American” with his AQ buddies.
He missed her three times. He was a very bad shot or she was protected.
Ok, I’ve not seen this posted before, so forgive me. Why does a church have an armed security guard?
I bet that's a clue right there as to why he was kicked out.
The gunman pointed a handgun at the woman and fired three shots, Bourbonnais said. She returned fire and just kept walking toward the gunman pressing off round after round.”
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Dang! One cool customer, this gal.
St. Thomas Aquinas says that it is an act of Christian charity, or love, to protect your neighbor if he is threatened by violence.
What he said is usually applied to theories of just warfare, but I believe it applies here, too. If you see someone about to kill an innocent person, it is an act of CHARITY to intervene if you can.
Because they’re are evil people who seek to do harm to people in church.
Wow, she sounds like a hero out of a Louis Lamour novel. She would have done well in the Old West!
She’d do to ride the river with.
A godly and faithful husband, I bet.
“Assam” — an ex-husband’s name, perhaps...?
Thank you!
This gal definitely has got what it takes. If she is not currently married she will be inundated with proposals and suitors
Another huge plus is the gunman is dead. The scales of justice are now somewhat balanced for his victims. No families will have to trudge to court to some mockery of a trial for this gunman. Where nit wit liberals ooh and ah about how he should not get the death penalty because he is crazy
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