25 years later, Fort Worth church will remember shooting that killed 7, injured others

After 25 years, congregants of Wedgwood Baptist Church still remember the day a gunman invaded the church and killed seven people . On Sunday, they’ll mark the 25th anniversary with a special service and remember the people whose lives were taken.

The Sept. 15, 1999, shooting was at that time believed to be the deadliest shooting in Fort Worth history. A man walked into the church, demeaning worshipers for their beliefs and shouting obscenities, and opened fire. Dressed in all black with long hair, the gunman killed mostly teenagers and detonated a bomb on the church’s balcony. In the end, he killed himself.

The victims killed, which included some students from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, were Shawn C. Brown, 23; Susan Kimberly Jones, 23; Cassandra Griffin, 14; Joseph D. Ennis, 14; Justin M. Ray, 17; Sydney R. Browning, 36; and Kristi Beckel, 14.

The Wednesday night church service and “See You at the Pole” prayer event featured Christian rock group Forty Days, drawing — as it was intended to — many young people among the more than 200 worshipers.

The gunman, a 47-year-old man who neighbors described as recluse who often carried a gym bag, also critically wounded seven others.

Some of the wounded were identified as Jeff Lester, a seminary student and custodian at the church; Jaynanne Brown; Mary Beth Talley, a senior at Southwest High School; Matt Parr, a Southwest junior; Nick Skinner; Cassie Griffin; and Kevin Galey.

News articles from the time said the gunman had a conversation with one 19-year-old man during the shooting, with the 19-year-old trying to talk him down and the gunman demeaning the religion before sitting in a pew and killing himself.

Witnesses described the shooting to the Star-Telegram that night.

“We thought it was a joke,” Kristen Dickens, a 14-year-old who was sitting in the second pew of the sanctuary when the gunfire erupted, said at the time. “We were singing and he told us to shut up. ... I thought our pastor was playing a joke on us.”

The shooting sent congregants diving for cover beneath pews as the gunman fired, stopping to reload several times.

“He just kept telling us to stay still,” Chris Applegate, a seventh-grader who was attending choir practice in another part of the church, told the Star-Telegram in September 1999.

“We were singing a song and then in the middle of the song this guy opened the door and fired one shot,” Applegate said. “He just kept telling us to stay still.”

Chip Gillette, an off-duty police officer, looked outside his house across the street from the church when his dog started barking, a police spokesperson said at the time. Gillette saw teens fleeing the church and ran there, unarmed, and then rushed back to his house when he heard the gunshots.

“He went back and got his equipment [gun, vest and police radio] and basically threw the shirt on, so no one would mistake him as the shooter,” the spokesperson said in 1999.

Days after the shooting, at a prayer service at a neighboring church, members told the Star-Telegram they were shocked. Some felt numbed by the shooting and other said healing would take time.

Al Meredith, the pastor of the church at the time, said after the shooting that the congregation’s hearts “are broken but not crushed.”

Wedgwood’s Sunday service will focus on remember the victims of the shooting. It starts at 9 a.m. at 5522 Whitman Ave. in Fort Worth.

This story contains information from the Star-Telegram’s archives.