A raving man terrified parishioners at a Virginia black church Thursday night, banging on a door and threatening to kill people inside just one day after a lunatic shot nine people dead in a Charleston black church, witnesses and police said.
Richmond cops quickly took him into custody and brought him to a local hospital, where he’ll be held for 72 hours while undergoing a mental health evaluation, police Capt. Chris Gleason told the Daily News. He did not harm anyone during his tirade.
“I never thought I’d see the day when police have to be at church,” Gleason told the congregation after the arrest, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
A brief cellphone video shows the heavyset white man, who hasn’t been identified, cursing at churchgoers while standing outside the United Nations Church International and pounding on a door, as people behind the camera yell to fellow churchgoers: “Lock all the doors!”
The man called the worshippers “n—–s” and said, “I’m gonna kill all you and all you are gonna get killed tonight” and “You’re taking over,” church members said.
After the Richmond congregation locked the man out, a security officer drew her gun on him and held him until police arrived. It’s unclear if he will face any charges, police said.
Those in the church believed the man was armed with a knife or machete, but police determined he had “a big piece of plastic that looked like a weapon,” Gleason told the News.
The man apparently had wandered over to the church on foot, Gleason said.
FULL COVERAGE OF CHARLESTON CHURCH MASSACRE
Bishop Oren Pullings told WRIC the disturbance started around 8:45 p.m., after a Bible study session — an eerie similarity to the Charleston shooting, which began after the suspected killer, Dylann Storm Roof, had sat in Bible study with his soon-to-be-victims for nearly an hour. Roof, 21, told the crowd, “You’re taking over our country” in a racist rant before the bloodshed, survivors said.
The Charleston rampage, which happened at the oldest AME church in the South, is one of the deadliest mass shootings in South Carolina’s history.
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