Sutherland Springs congregants reminded of pain on eve of massacre’s anniversary

SPRINGS — Julie Workman was watching Disney movies with her 3-year-old granddaughter, Eevee, when she saw the news blaring on her television: 11 shot and killed at Tree of Life synagogue in Pitts- burgh.

“I just froze, stared at the TV in disbelief. And going through my head was ‘Not again, not again, not again,’ ” Workman said, standing outside the First Baptist Church after Sunday services.

Workman is a survivor of the First Baptist Church shooting, which killed 26 people and wounded 20 others Nov. 5, 2017. She was injured by shrapnel and flying glass.

It was the deadliest shooting at a church in the U.S.

“Your heart sinks knowing some people are going through the same thing you’ve been through. Your body aches from the pain that they’re feeling,” said Michelle Shields, a church congregant and the mother-inlaw of the gunman, Devin Kelley, 26.

As they’ve struggled to come to terms with the deaths of so many loved ones, the Sutherland Springs community has also had to grapple with the trauSUTHERLAND

ma of watching similar mass shootings play out, again and again, in the nearly one year since their own.

Congregants were overwhelmed with heartbreak in February, when they learned of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in which 17 students and staff members were killed.

In May, a gunman killed eight students and two teachers at Sante Fe High School near Houston, and the survivors of Sutherland Springs had flashbacks to their own tragedy.

Now, they feel it again: the retraumatization, the secondhand grief, the pain in knowing that more people in the world will have to go through the kind of suffering they’ve experienced.

“Every time I hear about one of these shootings, it’s like a punch in the gut,” said Stephen Willeford, a congregant who confronted and shot at the gunman as he fled the church.

“(Church) is a place where you don’t expect something like this to happen. And then it keeps happening more and more often,” he said.

Willeford said that when he heard the news Saturday, he issued a quiet prayer for the people of Pittsburgh.

The shooting at Tree of Life synagogue came a little more than a week before the one-year anniversary of the Sutherland Springs massacre, and Sunday’s services at First Baptist included prayers for the Pittsburgh congregation.

“May your compassion, your grace and your mercy be in Pittsburgh with that synagogue and those folks there as well. Father, I thank you that you … can be both here and there. I pray a hedge of protection for all of those families,” Pastor Frank Pomeroy said in the opening prayer at the Sunday services.

San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said the city stands in solidarity with the people of Pittsburgh.

“Our hearts go out to the families who are suffering because of this act. We mourn their loss with them,” he said in a statement Sunday. “People of all faiths must be able to worship without fear of violence, and we must resolve to ensure their security.

“Our communities and the nation as a whole must stand strong against intolerance and strive toward a path of compassion and understanding that heals the deep animosities that are plaguing our society.”

Rabbi Jeffrey Abraham of Congregation Agudas Achim in San Antonio will be hosting a public memorial service at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Temple Beth-El to show that “we will not give into the hatred and anti-Semitism in our world,” he said in a statement.

The Tree of Life synagogue victims ranged in age from mid-50s to a 97-year-old woman. A criminal complaint said that as the gunman was taken into custody, he said he “wanted all Jews to die.”

“How dare a human being shoot another human being when it’s not for defense?” said Tambria Read, the local historian for Sutherland Springs and chair of the town’s museum. She knew almost everyone who died in the First Baptist shooting.

Read said the news of similar shootings affects her on a deeper level than it did before she experienced it in her community.

“It brings the quiver in my voice a lot quicker than it used to,” she said.

Workman said she had just been talking Thursday about the inevitability of another shooting. To see her foreboding confirmed so quickly “made me sick,” she said.

“The heartache and everything we have gone through is going to be in their lives, too,” she said. “When something horrible happens to you, you hope it stops with you. And it’s not.”

Shields had advice for the Tree of Life community: “Stay strong in your faith, and stay strong as a family. Take it day by day. Don’t let anybody tell you how you should heal.”

She said she hopes they know that the Sutherland Springs church is thinking of them and praying for them; and “if they reach out to us, we’re more than happy to be there for them, in any way we can.”