Grand Blanc, Michigan shooting: Gunman Thomas Jacob Sanford called 911 before LDS church attack, records show
Gunman Thomas Jacob Sanford made his own call to emergency dispatchers minutes before he drove to a Michigan church in September, rammed his truck into the chapel, opened fire and set the building ablaze, according to newly released records.
The documents, released first to ABC News by Grand Blanc Township Police, offer new details about the moments leading up to the shooting and reveal harrowing eyewitness accounts of the chaotic scene inside.
Less than four minutes before calls began coming into 911 about an attack at the LDS church in Grand Blanc, Michigan, Sanford himself phoned in a bomb threat about area churches, according to the records.
"This 911 bomb threat call came in at 10:21:50" and "was identified from past calls as belonging to Thomas Jacob Sanford," according to one of the police reports. The report noted that "the GPS location of where the 911 bomb threat call originated from" was "less than a mile from the church" that Sanford would soon attack.
The report described the caller as a "male who made bomb threats towards several local area churches and specifically described Mormon churches as being important. The male did not make any comments towards the specific church located at 4285 McCandlish Road. In the background audio of the 911 call, the possible sound of the exhaust of a vehicle can be heard while the male is speaking, as if the male was traveling in a vehicle while making the 911 bomb threat call."
Police said at the time that the shooting began at 10:25 a.m. Sanford was killed in a shootout with police, officials said. At least four churchgoers were killed, and eight others were injured in the attack.
SEE ALSO: Michigan church shooting: Bodycam footage shows police confront gunman
Michigan State Police have also previously said that after the shooting, they responded to several bomb threats at other locations in the area -- some of them churches. These records shed light on the origin of at least one of those threats as actually having come from the shooter himself.
Inside the chapel, what began as a worship service soon turned terrifying, as described by victims interviewed by police.
One woman who suffered a gunshot wound told officers that "about 15 to 20 minutes into the service she heard a loud bang," which she thought had come "from outside the chapel toward the front of the building."
But then she "heard someone from the congregation yell, 'Everyone leave now!'" and as she started toward the exit, "she felt a pain in her right leg just above her knee. She looked down and saw blood." Outside, someone "put her in the bed of a pickup truck," and she "remembers smelling smoke" as she went "in and out of consciousness."
Victims described fleeing and "debris flying as the bullets hit objects in the hallway." One woman described seeing a "pool of blood on the floor" as she went outside.
One man, who sat in the pews with his wife, four grandchildren and son-in-law, said he "heard a loud crash from behind the podium and saw the bleachers [ sic ] fall and the dry wall cracking," according to the records. "His first thought was that a car had struck the building."
Stepping outside, he saw a "male come around the corner of the building armed with a gun," the man told police. "The shooter was in a squatting position and walking, holding the rifle with both hands at a low ready and actively firing shots at him." The man described the shooter as "walking like a monkey" and appeared to be wielding a black AR-style rifle, and "wearing a mask and dressed in Camo fatigues."
One woman described seeing the shooter "breaking out the glass door. He was shooting the glass, kicking it, and using the gun to break out the broken glass from the door frame." She said she and her daughters "briefly hid behind some pews and saw bullets ricochet while the male was shooting," only getting up "after the suspect moved on."
The video in the player above is from an earlier report.
