The pastor of a Methodist church was killed with his own gun by a man sought by the police who had taken shelter in the building, officials said. Three others, including the gunman, were hurt.
A police chase on Saturday evening in East Texas culminated in a fatal confrontation on Sunday morning in a church between its pastor and a fugitive who was hiding there, officials said.
The shooting, at Starrville Methodist Church in Starrville, Texas, a small, unincorporated community about 100 miles east of Dallas, left the pastor dead and three others, including the gunman, injured, the authorities said.
The man had been fleeing the police in a Volkswagen Jetta on Saturday evening, brandishing a shotgun during the chase, Sheriff Larry Smith of Smith County said at a news conference on Sunday.
The man, identified as Mytrez Deunte Woolen, 21, of Marshall, Texas, was sought in two separate shootings on Saturday evening, Sheriff Smith said. He did not elaborate on those episodes but added that the license plates on the car Mr. Woolen was driving were “fictitious — they didn’t belong on that vehicle.”
After the Jetta crashed near the church — causing the car’s airbags to deploy and obstructing Mr. Woolen from taking the shotgun with him — he ran into the woods, leading to an unsuccessful manhunt involving drones and dogs that lasted more than two hours, Sheriff Smith said.
The church had been searched on Saturday night but Mr. Woolen most likely broke into the building sometime after 2 a.m. on Sunday, the sheriff said.
Unaware that a fugitive was hiding in their house of worship, the pastor, Mark McWilliams, 62, his wife and two others entered the church at around 9:30 a.m. local time on Sunday.
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