The man behind a deadly shooting at a Mormon church in Michigan last September called in fake threats to other houses of worship to distract police.
Thomas Jacob Sanford, 40, sought to “divert law enforcement resources” by making false reports about attacks at two other churches and a Jewish temple on Sept. 28 before his attack on the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc Township, about 60 miles northwest of Detroit.
Police said GPS data determined that Sanford was about a mile away from his real target when he called in bomb threats at the other locations.
“The caller was a male who made bomb threats towards several local area churches and specifically described Mormon churches as being important,” an incident report from the Grand Blanc Township Police reads.
“In the background audio of the 911 call, the possible sound of the exhaust of a vehicle can be heard while the male is speaking, as if the male was traveling in a vehicle while making the 911 bomb threat call.”
The fake reports were all made minutes before Sanford crashed his pickup truck into the church around 10:25 a.m., then started shooting congregants in the middle of a service and set the building on fire. Two were killed in the gunfire and another two died in the fire. Sanford was shot and killed by responding police.
Another eight people were injured in the attack.
One survivor described the shooter as “walking like a monkey” while firing an AR-style rifle while “wearing a mask and dressed in camo fatigues.”
Sanford, a former Marine, was motivated by “anti-religious beliefs against the Mormon religious community,” according to the FBI.
People who knew Sanford said he became vocally anti-Mormon after living in Utah and dating a Mormon woman before the relationship ended. He also told friends he became addicted to methamphetamines after leaving the military.
