Maryville, Ill., church resumes services after pastor's fatal shooting

MARYVILLE, Ill. — A week after its senior pastor was gunned down midsermon, an Illinois church resumed its services Sunday with hope that advice from a guest preacher whose own church was attacked by a gunman helps hasten the healing.

Almost to the minute that Fred Winters' life ended March 8 with a bullet through his heart inside First Baptist Church — his assailant's motives are still unclear — the Rev. Al Meredith told the roughly 200 people who turned out for the early service that "I've come here to be with you to let you know there is hope."

"I'm so sorry I'm not Pastor Fred," Meredith, of Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, said in opening his sermon, his voice halting as he choked back tears. "I'm so sorry it's just me. I am so sorry this happened to you. We're praying for you."

"I know many of you are still in shock," said Meredith, 62, adding that the church over time faces "a new normal" and the prospect that "you're never gonna get over this, but with God's grace you're gonna get through it."

Turning the page from what Meredith called the "evil day" that befell the church a week earlier was proving slow. Two dozen police officers from area agencies stood sentry outside the main doors, partly because some of Winters' flock had voiced fear about whether it was safe returning to the church. To help ease such worries, the church was handing out red bumper stickers marked simply with the word "Unafraid."

Many of the tissue boxes placed at the ends of each pew were put to use as Meredith recounted his own church's encounter with Larry Gene Ashbrook.

While Wedgwood hosted a community youth rally Sept. 15, 1999, Ashbrook walked in with two guns, 200 rounds of ammunition and a pipe bomb in his pockets. He seemed angry, witnesses said, and asked about the service before he opened fire at a group sitting in the lobby.

Ashbrook, 47, kept shooting as he walked down the hall and into the sanctuary filled with several hundred people, cursing and yelling as he emptied clip after clip of bullets. Meredith recalls it became Ashbrook's "killing field," and "kids didn't know if it was a skit or what" — a reaction eerily similar to that of many of the First Baptist faithful who saw Winters die.

Ashbrook later rolled his bomb down the aisle before killing himself. On Sunday, portraits of some of his slain victims were shown on First Baptist's big screens Sunday as Meredith lovingly described them.

Tests found no evidence of alcohol or drugs in Ashbrook's system. Investigators said they could only guess why Ashbrook targeted a church several miles from his house, and the suggestion was that he was mentally ill.

In Maryville, authorities say Terry Sedlacek, 27, walked down First Baptist's center aisle March 8 and fired a .45-caliber Glock once in Winters' direction, the bullet clipping Winters' Bible and sending pieces of it spraying in what some of the 150 onlookers also thought at first was a skit.

Instead, investigators say, Sedlacek fired three more times, hitting Winters only once before his gun jammed. Sedlacek then allegedly pulled out a knife and wrestled with two congregants who subdued him. All three were wounded.

Investigators say they later found in Sedlacek's bedroom an index card marked "Last Day Will" and a planner that singled out that Sunday as "death day."

Sedlacek is jailed without bond, charged with first-degree murder and aggravated battery.

As a five-year member of First Baptist, Rosanna Kosek, 60, wasn't at the service in which Winters was killed. But she was at the early service Sunday and afterward, often through tears, said Meredith's words of comfort resonated.

"It reaffirmed my thoughts that I'm on the right track," she said. "I wanted to come to the early one because I wanted to say I am not afraid. Evil is not going to keep me away from church."

Echoing Meredith's preachings that grief over Winters' death should be channeled into spiritual outreach, Kosek figures "it's an opportunity that we have to share, and if we can share our faith and bring people to Jesus that's what Pastor Fred would want."

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On the Net:

First Baptist Church of Maryville, http://fbmaryville.org

Wedgwood Baptist Church, http://www.wedgwoodbc.org