The tragic shooting inside a Michigan Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is already being politicized.
The left desperately needs this tragedy to be political because of the violence on that side of the aisle, but the facts point to something else entirely.
According to the New York Post, shooter Thomas Sanford had a long-standing, deranged fixation on the Mormon church.
Friends said the military veteran believed Mormons were going to “take over the world.”
That obsession appears to trace back to a soured relationship with a deeply committed Mormon woman in Utah.
A former landlord told The New York Times that Sanford was pressured by the woman to join the church.
“He wasn’t so sure that he wanted to become a member of the church, but he really wanted to be with this woman,” Sandra Winter said.
Sanford had moved to Utah after serving in the Marines, including a deployment to Iraq.
There, he reportedly began using methamphetamine, which friends say changed him.
“Mentally he was in rough shape,” Peter Tersigni told the New York Times.
By the time Sanford returned to Michigan, he was said to have been openly hostile toward Mormons.
“He got this whole fascination with Mormons, and they are the Antichrist, and they are going to take over the world,” Francis Tersigni, Peter’s twin brother, said.
His fixation was so extreme that at Peter’s wedding, “all he could talk about was Mormons.”
Burton, Michigan, city council candidate Kris Johns said Sanford approached him just a week before the massacre in which he was killed in a shootout with police.
“He was venting. He was going off …The Mormon Bible had additional books. He did not like that at all,” Johns told the New York Post.
Johns recalled Sanford calling Mormons the Antichrist in a calm, casual tone.
Days later, according to police, Sanford drove his truck into a church in Grand Blanc, opened fire, and burned the building to the ground.
Hellbound and Down 