According to the pastor of the Texas church where more than two dozen people were killed by a gunman during Sunday services, the church will be demolished. Earlier this week pastor Frank Pomeroy told leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention that it would be too painful to continue using First Baptist Church as a place of worship.
WRAL News reports that a national Southern Baptist spokesman confirmed Pomeroy and the denomination’s top executives, who traveled to the rural community in a show of support, discussed the current state of the building. There has been talk about turning the site into a memorial for the dead and putting up a new building on property the church owns.
However no final decisions can be made without consulting congregants. In regards to other sites of mass shootings, most have been torn down, including Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults in December 2012. A new school was built elsewhere.
In 2006 a one-room Amish schoolhouse near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was torn down just 10 days after an assailant took children hostage and shot and killed five girls ages 6 to 13. The previous site of the school is now a pasture, while a nearly identical schoolhouse with a security fence was erected nearby and named New Hope School.
A motive for the Texas church shooting remains unclear, however according to other reports the younger Kelley appears to have targeted the church because it was attended by his wife’s family. Authorities has said he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after being shot and chased by two residents when he was leaving the church.
The gunman shot and killed 25 people at the church but authorities have put the official toll at 26, because one of the victims was pregnant. All the victims died at the scene, except for one child who died at a hospital.
As of Thursday eleven people remained hospitalized with wounds they suffered in the attack.
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