GRAND BLANC TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Craig Hayden, 72, was killed as he tried to help another worshipper escape gunfire during a shooting at their Michigan church over the weekend, a family member said Tuesday.
And one of Hayden’s daughters, who survived Sunday’s shooting at a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc Township, came face to face with the shooter and “stared into his eyes,” she said in a handwritten letter that was posted to a family GoFundMe account started to help her mother.
Hayden’s daughter-in-law, Jennifer Hayden, said her father-in-law “was trying to help somebody else and that person lived.”
“So he gave his life for another,” she said. She did not provide further details about the encounter. “The other hero would be his daughter, who talked the gunman down and distracted him,” she said.
He would have celebrated his birthday next month, she said.
The daughter, who asked that her name not be used to protect her privacy, says in the letter that the shooter came over to her as she knelt next to her father, with her hands still on him.
She described being so close to the shooter that she could look him in the eyes.
She wrote that “she stared into his eyes” and that “the only way I can describe it is I saw into his soul.”
Hayden was among at least four people killed and eight injured in the shooting, which began when the attacker, identified as Thomas Jacob Sanford, drove a vehicle into the church, got out and opened fire with an assault rifle, police said. Authorities have not released the names of those killed. The shooter later set a fire at the church, and law enforcement officers shot and killed him, authorities said.
Authorities are still investigating the shooting and Sanford’s motives.
Kris Johns, a candidate for the Burton City Council, told NBC News that during a conversation last week, Sanford referred to members of the Latter-day Saints church as “the Antichrist.”
Johns said he was canvassing for his campaign last week when he encountered Sanford outside his home. The two spoke for about 20 minutes.
“He said, ‘Mormons are the Antichrist,’” Johns said. “He just said it very matter of fact.”
Johns said that he found the conversation unsettling but that Sanford was not “angry” when he spoke and that he did not perceive it as threatening at the time.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said in a statement that it mourned “with our members who have lost loved ones, and we join in prayer for comfort with others around the world who are suffering from similar tragedies.”
In her letter, Hayden’s daughter wrote that she could see pain in the shooter’s eyes.
“I never took my eyes off his eyes, something happened,” she wrote. “I saw pain, he felt lost. I deeply felt it with every fiber of my being. I forgave him, I forgave him right there, not in words, but with my heart.”
“He let me live,” she wrote.
She called on people to set aside hatred for others.
“If we can stop the hate we can stop the suffering. But stopping the hate takes all of us,” she wrote. “If you stop letting anger in, hate can’t spread.”
Selina Guevara, Adrienne Broaddus and Maggie Vespa reported from Michigan and Daniella Silva from New York City.
