Pastor Larry Wright disarmed a man who had entered his church in Fayetteville, N.C., with a semiautomatic rifle, talking him down using the word of God before he managed to fire a single round. The incident occurred at around 11:30 p.m. as the pastor was delivering a New Year's Eve sermon to his congregation about gun violence, when a man entered the Heal The Land Outreach Ministries' sanctuary with a rifle in one hand and an ammo clip in the other, according to Canada Journal.
Recounting the incident, Wright said he was the first to notice the man and initially discounted him thinking the gun wasn't real. "I'm the first person to see him and when I saw him, I thought it was a dummy gun, but then I saw the bullet clip in his hand and the bullets were shining," he said, according to CNN.
Other members of the congregation eventually took notice of him as well and feared that he would open fire similar to what happened in Charleston, S.C. However, instead of mirroring that fear, Wright stepped down from the podium to speak with him.
"I asked him 'can I help you?'" Wright told CBS' North Carolina affiliate WRAL-TV. "[The gunman's] next words were 'can you pray for me?' When he said that, then I knew everything was going to be all right."
A deacon and three others hugged the man, and invited him to stay for the remainder of the service. That was he revealed that he was an army vet with PTSD and said his wife was diagnosed with a debilitating disease but lacks the money to get either condition treated. He then apologized, saying he had intended to do "something bad," but the Lord spoke to him.
Police, who were notified about the weapon-toting stranger before the situation was clarified, were lying in wait outside the church and arrested him after the service. He wasn't charged with any crimes and was taken to Cape Fear Valley Medical Center as a voluntary commitment.
