VESTAVIA HILLS, ALA. -- Police investigating a shooting at an Alabama church that killed two people and wounded another said Friday that the shooter was a 71-year-old man who occasionally attended services.
Police Capt. Shane Ware did not identify the suspect, who was taken into custody following the shooting Thursday night at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in the Birmingham suburb of Vestavia Hills. Ware said prosecutors were preparing warrants to charge him with capital murder.
Ware said the man pulled a gun and opened fire during a potluck dinner attended by other church members. He killed an 84-year-old man and a 75-year-old woman, and left another woman wounded, before a person in the room restrained the gunman and held him until police arrived.
The Rev. Rebecca Bridges, the church's associate rector, led an online prayer service on the church's Facebook page Friday morning. She prayed not only for the victims and church members who witnessed the shooting, but also 鈥渇or the person who perpetrated the shooting.鈥�
鈥淲e pray that you will work in that person's heart,鈥� Bridges said. 鈥淎nd we pray that you will help us to forgive.鈥�
Bridges, who is currently in London, alluded to other recent mass shootings as she prayed that elected officials in Washington and Alabama 鈥渨ill see what has happened at St. Stephens and Uvalde and Buffalo and in so many other places and their hearts will be changed, minds will be opened.鈥�
鈥淎nd that our culture will change and that our laws will change in ways that will protect all of us,鈥� she added.
There have been several high-profile shootings in May and June, starting with a racist attack on May 14 that killed 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. The following week, a gunman massacred 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
Thursday's shooting happened just over a month after one person was killed and five injured when a man opened fire on Taiwanese parishioners at a church in Southern California. It comes nearly seven years to the day after an avowed white supremacist killed nine people during Bible study at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Agents with the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives joined investigators at the scene, which remained cordoned off Friday with yellow police tape and police vehicles with flashing lights blocking the route to the church.
People huddled and prayed nearby in the hours after the shooting.
鈥淚t is shocking. Saint Stephen's is a community built on love and prayers and grace and they are going to come together,鈥� the Rev. Kelley Hudlow, an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Alabama, told broadcast outlet WBRC. 鈥淧eople of all faiths are coming together to pray to hope for healing.鈥�
She said supportive messages were coming in from all over the U.S. and the world. 鈥淲e need everybody out there. Pray, think, meditate and send love to this community because we are going to need all of it,鈥� she said.
On Saturday thousands of people rallied in the U.S. and at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to renew calls for stricter gun control measures. Survivors of mass shootings and other incidents of gun violence lobbied legislators and testified on Capitol Hill earlier this month.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey issued a statement late Thursday lamenting what she called the shocking and tragic loss of life. Although she said she was glad to hear the suspect was in custody, she wrote: 鈥淭his should never happen - in a church, in a store, in the city or anywhere.鈥�
Vestavia Hills is a residential community just southeast of Birmingham, one of Alabama's two most populous cities.
