A gunman on Sunday shot several New Life Church worshippers, two of them fatally, before he was killed by a security guard.
(BRYAN OLLER, THE GAZETTE0 Police ID teens killed in New Life shootings
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By PERRY SWANSON
THE GAZETTE
December 10, 2007 - 2:28PM
The New Life Church shooting tore apart a close-knit and deeply religious family, killing two of four teenage children and wounding the father, relatives said today.
The dead are 18-year-old Stephanie Works and her sister, 16-year-old Rachael Works. They were described by their uncle, Mark Schaepe of Lincoln, Neb, as outgoing cheerful, faithful and smart.
“It teaches you that life is precious,” he said.
The Works sisters are survived by their parents, David Works, who was shot twice in the attack and remained hospitalized in fair condition; and Marie Works, along with two sisters.
The other victims of Sunday’s shootings include:
-Judy Purcell, 40, who suffered a gunshot wound to the right shoulder. She was treated at the hospital and released.
-Larry Bourbannais, 59, who suffered a gunshot wound to the left forearm. He was treated at the hospital and released.
The shooting followed an attack on a Denver-area missionary training center that left two people dead. Police investigators focused on a 24-year-old Arapahoe County man who lives at a house that was first searched before the second shooting Sunday.
Law enforcement sources have told KCNC television in Denver that the gunman found dead in the New Life Church in Matthew J. Murray, one of two sons of Denver-area neurosurgeon Ronald S. Murray.
Police agencies first arrived at the Murray home in the 10900 block of East Berry Place before noon Sunday and searched until before dawn today.
Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson confirmed his agency’s bomb squad was dispatched to the home about 7:15 Sunday night. He said his agency was supporting Arvada and Colorado Springs police who were executing a search warrant at the house. Police took several boxes of items from the home.
Ronald Murray’s Lone Tree medical office was closed this morning.
“Dr. Murray’s office is closed and he will not be available until further notice,” a phone recording said.
The gunman died at the scene in the parking lot. New Life Pastor Brady Boyd said church officials consider the attack on New Life a random act.
“We don’t know the shooter. He has no connection to our church,” he said.
Schaepe said family members suspect that the shooter could have targeted the girls because they were involved heavily with Youth With a Mission and had frequented the Arvada training center for the missionary group where two people were shot to death hours before the New Life attack.
The girls had gone on a mission trip to China with Youth With a Mission last year, Schaepe said.
Police in Arvada have said the two cases are likely linked.
Colorado Springs Police scheduled a press conference for 3 p.m. to offer additional details.
Boyd said he’s most concerned for “the family that lost two teenage daughters.”
“You can imagine what the parents are going through, losing two children by coming to church,” he said. “I’m asking Colorado Springs and the country, please pray for that family because they’re going through a hard time.”
Schaepe said the Works family, which moved to Denver from Montana in the mid-1990s, is deeply religious and home-schooled the four girls.
He said the family gravitated to New Life and had become heavily involved in church life.
“They felt at home in that particular group,” he said.
Schaepe said he hadn’t talked to the girls’ mother, Marie, but said family members were on the way from Nebraska to stay with her and the surviving children.
An official at the Dayton Meadows Apartments in Aurora, where the Works live, declined to answer questions about the family and asked media to leave the property today. The complex, a series of three-floor brick-and-wood buildings with a sign advertising “Two Bedrooms Free Rent” in an apartment-heavy area, sat quiet this morning.
Boyd said the security guard who killed the shooter was a “hero” whose actions had averted further bloodshed. He said she is normally his personal security guard, but on Sunday was stationed in the middle of a church rotunda, on the lookout for danger following reports of a shooting at a Christian ministry near Denver earlier in the day that left two dead. He said she is “highly trained” and has a background in law enforcement but is not currently a law enforcement officer.
Boyd said 15-20 volunteer church members regularly work as security guards on New Life’s 38-acre campus. The church has had a emergency response and evacuation plan in place for several years, he said.
“That’s the reality of our world. None of us grew up in a church where that was a reality, but today it is,” he said.
Boyd said the church might have been a target because of its high profile in the city, adding there might be some connection with the ousting last year of founder and former pastor Ted Haggard.
Boyd said he had visited and prayed with the victims' family in the hospital.
Woodmen Valley Chapel, another large church in Colorado Springs, offered crisis counseling for people who are distraught over the shootings. The counseling is available at the church’s Rockrimmon Campus Community Center, 290 E. Woodmen Road. For details, call 599-8652.
“Obviously the trauma that happened yesterday will take a long time to get through,” Boyd said. “But this is a strong church.”
CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0187 or
perry.swanson@gazette.com. Tom Roeder, Andrea Brown, Ed Sealover and Richard Wiens of The Gazette, and the Rocky Mountain News contributed to this report.