Fla. Shooter Targeted Church Where He Married
The Florida man who shot his wife to death in his house on Sunday went on to shoot two pastors of the church where the couple married nine years ago, according to emerging details.
The accused, 57-year-old Jeremiah Fogle, and his deceased wife, Theresa, were once members of the Greater Faith Christian Church on West Parker Street in Lakeland where the shooting occurred, according to Florida’s 10 News.
The Fogles wed in 2002 at the church.
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Fogle shot pastor William Boss and the associate pastor Carl Stewart inside the church on Sunday morning, and may have gone on to shoot others, had two parishioners not tackled him in time, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said. Fogle’s gun was still carrying one round of bullets and six more rounds were in his pocket.
“We don’t know what he would have done if not for the heroic actions of the people in the church to fight him to the ground and disarm him,” Sheriff Grady Judd was quoted as saying. “That is a hero.”
Having already killed his wife in his house, Fogle came to the church, entered through the front door and walked down the center aisle to the front, where parishioners were praying ahead of the regular morning service. Fogle went directly to Boss, who was kneeling in prayer, then Fogle bent down as if to identify him and shot him in the back of the head with a gun, a 32.-caliber revolver.
Fogle then shot the associate pastor him three times, in the head behind the left ear, in the left shoulder and in the middle of his back. That’s when two parishioners, Derrick Foster and Corey Reed, tackled Fogle. They held him down and took away his gun until police could arrive. Fogle suffered a cut on his head.
Foster told The Associated Press he was kneeling in prayer when Fogle entered the church. He heard one shot and then screaming. When he looked up, Fogle turned around and pointed the gun at the rest of the church. That’s when Foster and Reed tackled him. They wrestled with him for about four minutes before being able to get the gun.
A sister of the deceased, Laura Gardin, indicated that Theresa would go to church regularly, though not where the shooting happened. “You would never know that anything was wrong,” News 10 quoted Gardin as saying. “Every time you’d see her she had a smile on her face. Whenever you’d see her, she was either going to church, coming from church. Any time you say, ‘I need something,’ she was there. Never did you see her when she had a bad day.”
Gardin also said Fogle and Theresa had recently started their own ministry. They sometimes held services at their house.
Boss and Stewart were at Lakeland Regional Medical Center as of Sunday evening and both were said to be in critical condition.
