The church in a small, close-knit neighbourhood in Michigan, US lay in ruins. Only days ago, a gunman had rammed his car into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and opened fire. He was an Iraq war veteran and had used harsh terms to criticise the denomination on social media ahead of the attack. Thomas Jacob Sanford, the attacker, managed to kill four people that day using an assault-style weapon and wounded several others. He also set the church ablaze. The police managed to kill him but couldn't save the church from burning to the ground. Sanford's anger stemmed, at least in part, from his decade-old breakup with a girlfriend who belonged to the Latter Day Saints (LDS), said a CNN report. The attack came as a shock to the community but it soon got back to rebuilding. Children from the neighborhood gave flowers and shared messages of resilience and hope and mothers offered free hugs, a New York Times report said. The reconstruction effort, to buy medicines for the wounded and cover funeral expenses for the dead, needed money and true to the times, several fund-raising accounts were set up. One of them, set up by a LDS churchgoer and Utah-based writer Dave Butler, was a bit unusual. Among the scores of fundraisers for the victims of the shooting incident, Butler has set one up for the family of the shooter. For the 53-year-old Butler, the attacker's wife and kid were simply "two more victims". He wasn't alone in this feeling. People chipped in with whatever they could. From $10, $20 or $50 to some benefactors who contributed $5,000, the account had more than $200,000. Overlooking the “the other family that was left without a father” seemed "very cruel,” Butler said. The attacker's father, Thomas Sanford, told NYT that the family was grateful for the page. “They are pretty moved that so many people have expressed love for them,” Butler said.
