{"id":654,"date":"2025-09-29T12:37:47","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T12:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globaltalentholding.com\/?p=654"},"modified":"2025-09-30T12:21:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T12:21:10","slug":"michigan-church-shooting-suspect-was-marine-iraq-war-veteran-officials-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globaltalentholding.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/29\/michigan-church-shooting-suspect-was-marine-iraq-war-veteran-officials-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan church shooting suspect was Marine, Iraq War veteran, officials say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The suspect in the Sunday shooting at a Michigan church was a Marine who served in Iraq, according to military officials.<\/p>\n<p>Authorities identified the suspect as Thomas Jacob Sanford, 40, who died on the scene. <\/p>\n<p>The Marine Corps in a statement obtained by NewsNation said Sanford was a sergeant who served between 2004 and 2008 and was deployed during the Iraq War. He was awarded multiple medals including the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, officials said.<\/p>\n<p>Four people died in the shooting at the\u00a0Church of\u00a0Jesus Christ\u00a0of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, Mich., according to authorities, with some still unaccounted for. Authorities said Sanford crashed his car into the church and lit the building on fire.<\/p>\n<p>President Trump said Sunday <a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/state-watch\/5526130-deadly-michigan-church-shooting\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the deadly shooting<\/a> at the Mormon church looked to be a \u201ctargeted attack on Christians.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have been briefed on the horrendous shooting that took place at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in Grand Blanc, Michigan. The FBI was immediately on scene, and will be leading the Federal Investigation, and providing full support to State and Local Officials. The suspect is dead, but there is still a lot to learn,\u201d Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.<\/p>\n<p>The FBI\u2019s Detroit <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/FBIDetroit\/status\/1972463056975274373\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">field office also posted<\/a> on social media Sunday night that the agency was \u201casking that members of the public share any information that would assist in this investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The incident follows the shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis in late August.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The suspect in the Sunday shooting at a Michigan church was a Marine who served in Iraq, according to military officials. Authorities identified the suspect as Thomas Jacob Sanford, 40, who died on the scene. The Marine Corps in a statement obtained by NewsNation said Sanford was a sergeant who served between 2004 and 2008 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltalentholding.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltalentholding.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltalentholding.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltalentholding.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltalentholding.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globaltalentholding.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":655,"href":"https:\/\/globaltalentholding.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions\/655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltalentholding.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltalentholding.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltalentholding.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltalentholding.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}