</noinclude> On the morning of September 28, 2025, a mass shooting and arson attack occurred at a meetinghouse of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan, United States. The perpetrator, 40-year-old Thomas Jacob Sanford, rammed his pickup truck into the front wall of the chapel, then exited the vehicle and opened fire on the congregation with an AK-47-style rifle. At some point Sanford set the building on fire, likely using gasoline as an accelerant, which destroyed most of it. Four church members were killed and eight injured. Two were shot dead and two died in the fire. Sanford was killed by police after a shootout in the building's parking lot three minutes and 47 seconds after the officers were dispatched.
The Michigan office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said the attack was being investigated as an "act of targeted violence". FBI director Kash Patel said that Sanford reportedly "hated people of the Mormon faith" and a Burton City Council candidate told reporters that Sanford called LDS Church members "the antichrist" when the two had met a week before the attack. Friends said Sanford's frequently expressed animosity toward church members began after a relationship with a LDS woman more than a decade earlier ended badly.
Background The attack occurred at the LDS Church's Grand Blanc Stake Center in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan, a suburb of Flint in Genesee County. The building was the headquarters of seven individual LDS Church congregations, called wards, that combine to form a unit called a stake. In addition to being used for special events involving multiple wards, the building served as the meetinghouse for the Grand Blanc Ward, with about 150 weekly attendees.
The building was dedicated in September 1981 with a ceremony hosted by former Michigan governor George W. Romney. His son, Mitt Romney, said a cousin attended services there until a recent ward boundary change placed her in another meetinghouse. As of 1996, the building had a capacity of approximately 1,100 and was located on a parcel of land.
The attack took place one day after the death of the church's president, Russell M. Nelson. Early investigators noted the short time between Nelson's death and the attack on the meetinghouse. It was the first shooting at an LDS Church meetinghouse since a July 2018 shooting in Fallon, Nevada, which left one person dead and another injured.
Two other high-profile fatal shootings occurred within weeks before the attack: the assassination of right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk; and a shooting at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility that killed two immigrant detainees by an assailant with alleged "anti-ICE" motives. It was in this politically charged landscape that early speculations about Sanford's motives centered on his party affiliation and political identity. Some of his friends described him as a right-wing Republican, though law enforcement officials and those who knew him did not believe that he had been motivated by politics, but rather his reported animosity toward the LDS Church and its members.
This was not the first shooting at a place of worship this year in Michigan: in Wayne, about an hour south of Grand Blanc, a church had been attacked during Sunday worship by a heavily armed lone shooter in June, with over 100 people inside. One churchgoer was wounded and the shooter was killed by security.
Attack The attack began at approximately 10:25 a.m. EDT. Witnesses reported that Sanford rammed his GMC Sierra pickup truck into a brick wall on the south side of the building, directly beneath the steeple. He then exited the vehicle armed with an assault rifle and opened fire on a church service attended by hundreds of people, including children. Witnesses reported that Sanford was wearing camouflage pants. A church member recounted hearing a big bang that forced the doors open. Another member, while helping elderly people into a vehicle to escape, saw Sanford deliberately target the vehicle. At some point Sanford set the building on fire, likely using gasoline as an accelerant, destroying most of the building and killing two church members inside. Grand Blanc Township firefighters extinguished the fire sometime between noon and 1 p.m.; by 8 p.m. the bodies of both church members killed in the fire had been recovered.
Grand Blanc Township Police Chief William Renye initially reported that a Michigan Department of Natural Resources conservation officer and a Grand Blanc Township police officer arrived within 30 seconds of the first 911 call. Renye then said the officers killed Sanford during an exchange of gunfire in the parking lot within eight minutes of the first call. On October 3, the township police department released a 47-second video captured by the body camera of one of the responding officers. Reyne said a review of call logs and the footage showed that only 3 minutes and 47 seconds had elapsed between the two officers receiving the call from dispatch and killing Sanford. The department accordingly released an updated timeline:
10:25:32 — the first 911 call was received from a person reporting they had been shot in the stomach 10:25:48 — a 911 dispatcher notified the Grand Blanc Township police of the incident 10:27:46 — the natural resources officer arrived on scene 10:28:54 — the township officer arrived on scene
The video begins with the sound of multiple shots being fired and one officer telling the other "I got your back back here, man." The second officer can then be heard commanding Sanford to drop his gun and get on the ground. The first officer then told the other to shoot Sanford, after which two shots are heard—both fired by the conservation officer, according to investigators. The video shows a man wearing a suit, believed to be a congregation member, running toward Sanford carrying a handgun, then stopping to take aim but not firing. The video ends with both officers approaching Sanford, who is lying motionless in the parking lot.
Victims Four church members were killed. Two were killed by gunfire; one was pronounced dead at the scene and the other died at nearby Henry Ford Genesys Hospital. Two victims died in the fire; both bodies were recovered after the fire was extinguished. The ages of the victims who had been killed or wounded ranged from 6 to 78 years.
Eight surviving church members were admitted to Henry Ford Genesys Hospital, five for gunshot wounds and three for smoke inhalation. By the evening of the attack, six of them were listed in stable condition and two critical; one of the critical patients had suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen, the other an abdominal wound. The latter man's 6-year-old son was treated for a gunshot wound to his arm, transferred to a different hospital, and released within a few days. One man listed in stable condition had a gunshot wound in the leg. Two of the patients treated for smoke inhalation were discharged by the next day, while one who could not breathe without assistance remained intubated. An additional victim was treated for smoke inhalation at McLaren Healthcare and released the next day.
A church member who died at the scene from gunfire was married, 72-year-old former LDS bishop Craig Hayden. One of his daughters, who was present during the attack, wrote on social media that as Sanford approached while she knelt over her dying father, she looked into his eyes and "forgave him right there", adding that she "saw pain, he felt lost [...] I forgave him not in words, but with my heart." Another daughter said her sister's post helped her to also forgive Sanford, saying, "I prayed for the man that took my father's life and I told him he is forgiven [...] I can tell you first hand it is actually very easy."
77-year-old US Navy veteran of the Vietnam War John Bond, was identified by his family as one of the victims who had been shot and killed. The other two church members who died were 54-year-old Thelma Armstrong, originally from South Africa and 77-year-old Pat Howard.
Two of the men wounded during the attack were fourth-year emergency medicine residents at Genesys Hospital. Both were Utah natives who had done their undergraduate work at Brigham Young University, and both ran back into the burning building several times to help others escape. One of the two, who was then the chief of education for residents, required extended treatment for smoke inhalation. A nurse who worked with him told reporters, "He wasn't going to not run in there. That's not him." Noting that he had served in the military, she added, "It's in his tactical training to do that." The other resident and his 6-year-old daughter were both wounded by bullet fragments as he was helping her and his wife escape through a window. He was the chief of residents at the time. The medical chief of staff at the hospital called them "absolute heroes" for "going in and out of the fire to drag people out, helping each other take care of the victims on the scene".
Perpetrator The attacker was identified as Thomas Jacob Sanford, a 40-year-old Iraq War veteran from Burton, Michigan. Sanford was born on July 29, 1985, and raised in Atlas Township, Michigan. After graduating from Goodrich High School in May 2004, he joined the Marines in June 2004 and was stationed in Okinawa, Japan. He earned recognition for his rifle marksmanship and achieved the rank of sergeant before being deployed to Fallujah, Iraq, in August 2007. His roles in Iraq were to repair military transport vehicles and equipment, and be a "vehicle recovery operator" responsible for retrieving armored troop support vehicles. He returned to the U.S. in March 2008 and was discharged three months later. Sanford and his wife were married in 2016 by Sanford's father, an ordained minister. The couple had at least one child, a son, who underwent multiple surgeries in 2015 to treat a rare genetic disorder, causing significant financial stress. Sanford reportedly said at the time that caring for his sick son was the "most unique thing to deal with" compared to his military service and Iraq deployment.
Motive for attack According to friends and acquaintances, Sanford had been in a relationship with a devout LDS woman while residing in Park City, Utah, more than a decade before the attack. He had reportedly felt "pressured" to join the church but resisted, and the relationship ended badly. One friendwho described Sanford as his best friend since preschoolsaid that Sanford returned to Michigan in mental "rough shape" and frequently expressed animosity toward LDS Church members. "He got this whole fascination with Mormons, and they are the Antichrist, and they are going to take over the world", the friend said. The same friend said Sanford's time in Iraq and heavy methamphetamine use seemed to have changed him even more from the "class clown" persona of his youth.