Grand Blanc – A man crashed his vehicle through the front doors of a Michigan church before opening fire with an assault rifle and setting the building ablaze, resulting in the deaths of at least four people and wounding at least eight others. The perpetrator was killed in a subsequent shootout with police, officials confirmed.
Police identified the shooter as Thomas Jacob Sanford, 40, a former US Marine from the nearby town of Burton. Sanford deliberately set fire to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was quickly engulfed in flames and billowing smoke.
Initial reports confirmed two shooting victims dead and eight others hospitalized. However, several hours after the incident began, police reported finding at least two more bodies within the charred remains of the church, which had not yet been fully cleared and may contain other victims.
“There are some that are unaccounted for,” Grand Blanc Township Police Chief William Renye told a press conference.
An official with the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) stated that investigators believe the shooter used an accelerant—likely gasoline—to fuel the fire, and that some explosives were recovered at the scene. The FBI has taken the lead on the investigation, classifying the incident as “an act of targeted violence.”
Chief Renye noted that hundreds of people were inside the church when Sanford drove into the building. Two law enforcement officers arrived at the scene within 30 seconds of receiving emergency calls and engaged the suspect in gunfire, shooting him dead in the parking lot about eight minutes after the rampage began. Investigators plan to search the shooter’s home and phone for a motive.
Perpetrator Background and Coincident Attacks
US military records indicate Sanford served as a US Marine from 2004 to 2008 and was a veteran of the Iraq war.
In a disturbing coincidence, another 40-year-old Marine veteran who also served in Iraq is the suspect in a North Carolina shooting that killed three people and wounded five others less than 14 hours before the Michigan incident. Police in Southport, North Carolina, accused Nigel Max Edge of firing on a waterfront bar from a boat. Edge has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder.
According to court records, a dismissed federal lawsuit filed by Edge against the US government described him as a decorated Marine who suffered severe wounds, including a traumatic brain injury, while serving in Iraq.
Victim Accounts and Political Reaction
A witness in Michigan, identified as Paula, told WXYZ television she heard “a big bang and the doors blew.” She added, “I lost friends in there and some of my little primary children that I teach on Sundays were hurt. It’s very devastating for me.”
President Donald Trump issued a statement on Truth Social, declaring that the shooting “appears to be yet another targeted attack on Christians in the United States of America” and called for an immediate end to “THIS EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE IN OUR COUNTRY.”
The Michigan rampage marked the 324th mass shooting in the US in 2025, according to the Gun Violence Archive. It was the third US mass shooting in less than 24 hours, following the North Carolina incident and a subsequent shooting at a casino in Eagle Pass, Texas, that killed at least two people.
