2025 Grand Blanc Township church attack
mass shooting and arson
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.
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