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Cops: Wife found hiding with knife in husband's mistress' closet had 'sinister motives'

Shawn Cohen

Lohud.com

1:37 PM, Apr. 19, 2011 

PEEKSKILL - A woman found hiding in a closet of her husband's mistress brought a 12-inch carving knife, surgical gloves, duct tape, bleach and garbage bags - and was waiting for the couple to return home, police said.

It is clear she had "sinister motives," said Peekskill police Lt. Eric Johansen, who could only speculate what she planned to do. "Given the items recovered, it lends itself, at the very least, to some semblance of violence."

Lizbeth Hernandez, who is being held without bail at the Westchester County jail in Valhalla, was allegedly seen by a neighbor breaking into the paramour's Peekskill condominium Saturday morning, shortly after Hernandez's husband and his girlfriend left her place.

Police said Hernandez, 47, of Middletown, had secretly followed her husband when he left his job in lower Westchester Friday evening. The husband, who left his wife a few months ago, spent the night at his girlfriend's Woods III condo. Hernandez spent the night outside in her car, waiting. At some point, she allegedly used a key to scrape the cars of her husband and girlfriend, leaving gouge marks along the sides and tops, causing several thousand dollars in damage.

After the couple left, Hernandez walked up to the ground-floor apartment and tried to open a window. A neighbor noticed her and called 911, then described Hernandez's ongoing efforts to enter the unit. Hernandez went back and forth to her car several times, retrieving a hammer and a metal spatula. She pried open a screen, smashed the window, then crawled inside over shards of glass, police said.

Police officers entered with flashlights. They found her - at 5 feet tall and 120 pounds - deep in a closet, hiding under a pile of clothes, Johansen said.

"She had concealed herself quite well," he said. "It appears she was going to lie in wait for them to return."

Hernandez said nothing of substance when officers found her, and she was taken into custody without a struggle, police said.

She was carrying the knife, gloves and tape. Inside her car, police found some garbage bags and a jug of bleach.

"On its own, that wouldn't raise too much concern, but combined with everything else, it certainly raised the level of suspicion as to what her true motive was," Johansen said. "She didn't say what her motive was. However, given the fact all these items were recovered and the fact she broken into the home, you have to think there was a much more sinister plan."

Hernandez, who lives on Oak Hill Road, has had several prior domestic disputes with her husband in which she was the aggressor, Johansen said. The couple, who have no children, have been married at least five years, he said.

She is charged with second-degree burglary and third-degree criminal mischief, felonies. She was arraigned yesterday and is due back in City Court on Monday.

Lizbeth Hernandez

http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/region/oakland_county/father-of-12-year-old-who-attempted-to-rob-a-store-says-she-did-it-to-try-and-save-her-home

Lawsuit asks state to pay for inmate's sex-change operation

Lyralisa Stevens says she is harassed and sexually assaulted by male prisoners, and needs surgery to be assigned to a women's prison. State officials say they aren't required to provide that level of care.

Thomas Strawn, a transgender inmate who goes by the name Lisa, applies eyeliner inside her cell. She says she is in a committed relationship with a man in the next cell and would not want to be transferred to a women's prison. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Jack Dolan, Los Angeles Times

April 19, 2011, 6:02 p.m.

 

Reporting from Vacaville—

Lyralisa Stevens, who was born male but lives as a female, is serving 50 years to life in a California prison for killing a San Bernardino County woman with a shotgun in a dispute over clothes.

Stevens is one of more than 300 inmates in the state prison system diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder, a psychiatric condition addressed in free society with hormone replacement therapy and, in some cases, sex reassignment surgery.

Prison officials have provided female hormones for Stevens since her incarceration in 2003. But now she is asking the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco to require the state to pay for a sex-change operation.

Stevens, 42, and her expert witnesses say that surgery is medically necessary, and that removal of her penis and testicles and transfer to a women's prison are the best way to protect her from rape and abuse by male inmates.

As prison officials have struggled to address chronic overcrowding, the constant threat of gang violence and a health system that federal judges have equated with "cruel and unusual" punishment, they have also gone to court multiple times to answer allegations that they failed to properly treat and protect transgender inmates.

Judges have sided with transgender prisoners — who according to a UC Irvine study are 13 times more likely to suffer sexual assault than other inmates — on some significant cases. In 2009, the California Supreme Court ruled that an inmate could sue guards for failing to protect her from repeated rapes and beatings by her cellmate. In 1999, an appeals court ordered prison officials to provide hormone therapy to inmates who were already taking them when they arrived. The treatments cost about $1,000 a year per prisoner.

A ruling in Stevens' favor would make California the first place in the country required to provide reassignment surgery for an inmate, according to lawyers for the receiver appointed to oversee California's troubled prison health system. They argue that the state should be required to provide only "minimally adequate care," not sex-change operations that cost $15,000 to $50,000.

Stevens, who has a slight build — 5-foot-6 and about 115 pounds — and entered prison with silicon injections in her breasts and hips to feminize her physique, said in a court filing that she feels like she's under threat of sexual assault in the men's facility and wants the surgery, in part, so she'll be sent to a women's institution.

"The male inmate is not expecting to see breasts … in the shower next to him," Stevens wrote. The situation can lead to violent disputes among the men and sparks attacks against transgender inmates, who may have less upper body strength because of the hormone therapy, Stevens said.

In a court filing supporting Stevens' petition, psychotherapist Lin Fraser said she has "grave concerns" for Stevens' safety because she "had been put alone in cells all night long with men who threatened and abused her."

State law requires prisons to assign inmates to men's or women's institutions based on "gender," which corrections officials determine solely by a prisoner's genitals. Richard Masbruch, who tried multiple times to castrate himself while in a Texas prison and eventually succeeded, is in the California Institution for Women inChino. Masbruch, who goes by the name Sherri, was transferred from Texas to serve 40 years for a 1991 rape in Fresno.

While confronting complaints and lawsuits by transgender inmates challenging their housing assignments during the mid-2000s, the California prison system commissioned a study by UC Irvine sociologists to help them understand the small, uniquely vulnerable population. The study found that 59% of transgender inmates said they had been raped or otherwise sexually assaulted behind bars, compared with 4.4% of the general prison population, lead researcher Valerie Jenness told the state Senate Public Safety Committee.

Despite those numbers, 59% of transgender inmates said they did not want to move to a women's institution.

"The advantages of being in a men's prison include the pursuit of sex and the possibility of securing a male partner," Jenness said. "Concern about safety is not a main factor in predicting [housing] preferences."

Stevens declined to join a group of transgender inmates interviewed by The Times recently at the prison system's main medical facility in Vacaville. But six others — of the 30 to 50 transgender inmates housed there at any given time — spoke candidly about their lives in prison.

Thomas Strawn, 52, who uses the name Lisa and is serving a life sentence after a third-strike conviction for burglary, said she is in a committed relationship with the man in the next cell and would not want to move.

"I stayed single for an entire year when I got here," Strawn said. "But now I got with somebody and I've been with him now two years."

Others, such as convicted killer David, or Bella, Birrell, 58, who said she had been raped in prison, would like to be transferred to a women's facility. "You don't have to worry about the constant harassment like you get from the men here," she said.

Only two of the six said they would be interested in a sex change operation if a court order compelled the state to pay the costs.

"I had made plans to try to get [the surgery] done before I committed the crime that I did," said Steve Alamillo, 39, who goes by Nikkas and is serving life for first-degree murder. "If the state can do that stuff, absolutely."

Willie Murphy, 47, who is also known as Mena and is serving life on a third-strike conviction for burglary, was among the majority, preferring to "keep what I got."

Surgery is where the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation draws the line.

"A prison is not required by law to give a prisoner medical care that is as good as he would receive if he were a free person, let alone an affluent free person," attorney Steven J. Bechtold, who represents the receiver, wrote in the state's response to Stevens' petition for the operation.

The prison system has lost on a similar point before. The state provides hormone therapy today because a federal court found in a 1999 case that failing to continue treatment for inmates who were on hormones before coming to prison amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

"We regularly get questions about why we are treating these patients," said Dr. Joseph Bick, chief medical officer at Vacaville. "The bottom line is, not only is it appropriate, but it's mandated by federal courts."

Stevens, who has fathered three children, argues in her court case that the tail of estrogen and testosterone-blockers the state has provided since her incarceration in 2003 are no longer adequate to combat her emotional distress. Failing to provide surgery could increase her "risk of future self-harm," wrote Dr. Denise Taylor, a medical expert who filed a brief on Stevens' behalf.

Taylor also argued that leaving Stevens on estrogen therapy could lead to the reemergence of a benign tumor removed from her brain in 2005.

Bick, who filed a declaration with the court in January defending the state's position, said the previous tumor was not believed to be caused by estrogen therapy. He said Stevens' treatment in prison has been "adequate and successful."

Perhaps the biggest threat to Stevens' case is the state's budget crisis, in the view of several transgender inmates interviewed. They worried that a judge might be reluctant to rule in her favor with the state facing hard times.

"If I were out there, I wouldn't understand, especially if I was unemployed or trying to support a family," Birrell said.

"But if you could only go into our heads for a day or two to see what we go through internally," she said, "you would get a greater appreciation of how devastating it is to be a transgender individual locked up in a man's prison."

LINK TO  PHOTO OF LYRALISA STEVENS:

 http://www.wtsp.com/news/watercooler/article/187528/58/Vacaville-Inmate-Sues-State-For-Sex-Change-Surgery

http://www.kare11.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=909923560001

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/plane-with-michelle-obama-had-to-abort-landing-due-to-mistake/2011/04/19/AFsRLC7D_story.html?wpisrc=al_national

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/crime&id=8081598

Donald Trump as GOP hopeful: Take him seriously

Eugene Robinson

Monday, April 18, 7:46 PM

It’s time to take Donald Trump seriously as a presidential candidate.

Three, two, one . . . okay, time’s up.

Unbelievably, the waxen-haired real estate tycoon is at the front of the pack of contenders who are racing, or thinking about racing, for the Republican nomination. This isn’t merely improbable. It is literally unbelievable, as if a trout were reported to be leading the Tour de France.

The consensus is that Trump is not really running — that this is just another of his over-the-top publicity stunts. In the unlikely event that he goes through with a semi-serious candidacy, the political establishment seems to believe, he’ll never win the nomination. These skeptics scoff when it’s pointed out that stranger things have happened. Name one, they say.

That’s hard to do. Still, if this is all a big joke, I’m having trouble laughing. For one thing, the likely Republican field is so timid that nobody seems to want to step out there — and so lackluster that Trump’s pizzazz could prove overpowering. No, I don’t believe that Trump is seriously running for president. But what if he continues this charade past the point of no return? What if he pulls away from Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and the others? What if he wins primaries and caucuses? What if . . .

It’s all too absurd to contemplate. For the record, though, it should be noted that not all of Trump’s headline-grabbing bombast is funny. A lot of it is ridiculous and untrue. Much of the rest is offensive and objectionable.

Begin with his adoption of the “birther” line of attack against President Obama. Questioning the president’s birthplace obviously began as a ploy to grab attention — and it worked — but then swelled into a central theme of Trump’s “candidacy” as he gained traction among the conspiracy theorists who actually believe such nonsense.

For the record, Trump now gives credence to a theory that requires a massive coverup, spanning nearly five decades, that includes not just Obama and his family but also officials of the state of Hawaii — and the cooperation of long-ago clerks and perhaps editors at Honolulu newspapers who printed a “fake” birth announcement in 1961 and waited patiently, all these years, for that baby boy to become president of the United States.

But that’s just for starters. Imagine, if you dare, what the foreign policy of a President Trump would be like.

Trump is in favor of lower gas prices, he told CNN’s Candy Crowley on Sunday. The way to achieve this goal, he said, is simply to tell the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to lower oil prices. When Crowley tried to point out that OPEC doesn’t necessarily do what U.S. officials want, Trump was undeterred. “Brain power” is all that’s required, he said. “We are not a respected nation anymore. The world is laughing at us. . . . Let me tell you, it’ll go down if you say it properly.”

What about Libya? “Either I’d go in and take the oil or I don’t go in at all,” Trump said. When Crowley reacted with disbelief at what she’d just heard, Trump doubled down. “Absolutely, I’d take the oil, I’d give them plenty so they can live very happily. I would take the oil. You know, in the old days when you have a war and you win, that nation’s yours.”

What about his opponents? It seems that size matters, in terms of their bank accounts. Trump trumpets himself as a better businessman than Romney, claiming that “my net worth is many, many, many times Mitt Romney.”

Moving right along, how does Trump see one of the central strands of American history, the issue of race? He believes he should get support from African Americans, he said in a radio interview last week, but is unsettled by “frightening” polls that show the vast majority of black voters favoring Obama. “I have a great relationship with the blacks,” Trump said. “I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.”

Yes, he said “the blacks.” Twice.

Trump hasn’t been a particularly loyal Republican over the years. At various times, he’s given political donations to Democrats such as Rep. Charlie Rangel, Sen. John Kerry, Vice President Biden and the late Ted Kennedy.

What he’s been, consistently, is a headline-grabber extraordinaire. If he now has decided to take himself seriously, I’m afraid we’re going to have to follow suit.

 

D. Anschutz/Getty

 

State bureaucrats have created a list of 'risky activities' for kids at summer camp. The list includes freeze tag, Wiffle Ball and kickball, among other games and activities.

That's right, officials have decided the age-old street game - along with Wiffle Ball, kickball and dodgeball - poses a "significant risk of injury."

And classics like Capture the Flag, Steal the Bacon and Red Rover are also deemed dangerous in new state regulations for day camps.

"It looks like Albany bureaucrats are looking for kids to just sit in a corner in a house all day and not be outside," said state Sen. Patty Ritchie (R-St. Lawrence County).

"I don't think Wiffle Ball is a dangerous sport."

The Health Department created a list of supposedly risky recreational activities - which also includes more perilous pursuits like archery, scuba and horseback riding - in response to a state law passed in 2009.

The law sought to close a loophole that legislators said allowed too many indoor camp programs to operate without oversight.

Under the new rules, any program that offers two or more organized recreational activities - with at least one of them on the risky list - is deemed a summer camp and subject to state regulation.

Ritchie said the regulations could cripple small recreational programs, forcing them to pay a $200 fee to register as a summer camp and provide medical staff.

And many parents felt like state officials were being, well, wimpy.

Kimberly Baxter, 27, a medical assistant from South Ozone Park, Queens, said she played freeze tag with abandon as a youngster.

"I never got hurt, maybe scraped my knee once in a while but that was it," said Baxter, mom to a 1-year-old girl.

Deborah Graham, 51, a mother of two from Harlem, said moving around was less harmful than playing video games all summer.

"You could develop Carpal Tunnel Syndrome," she said. "And when (kids) eat, eat, and eat, they get diabetes. That's dangerous."

The state Camp Directors Association backed the 2009 law, and Health Department spokeswoman Diane Mathis said the list of risky activities was crafted with help from camp groups.

She said the list - which labeled Frisbee, tug of war and sack races as safe - was offered only as "guidance" to local governments and organization.

She stressed that not every program will need to hire medical staff. Some simply need to have a plan in place to deal with medical emergencies.

"There will be flexibility in how the law is implemented," Mathis said.

Susan Craig, a spokeswoman for the city Health Department, said the new law is not expected to have much impact since most city programs already meet the state requirements.

While many New Yorkers scoffed at the idea of tag leading to traumatic brain or spinal injury, Bronx resident Kim Wainwright said it's better to be safe than sorry.

"Kids these days are kinda brutal so I can see those games being dangerous," said Wainwright, who has a 5-year-old. "I agree with it."

With Mark Morales and Tanyanika Samuels

Kevin D. Williamson

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE

Surgeons' 'bottle-to-scalpel' time affects errors

If you're going under the knife, you might want to ask your surgeon what she had to drink the night before.

A new study suggests that surgeons are more error prone and less efficient after a night of drinking than at other times, even if they have no detectable traces of alcohol in their blood.

In the study, researchers threw a dinner party for eight expert surgeons at Yale University and instructed them to drink until they felt intoxicated.

Then, on the following day, the doctors were asked to perform a series of simulated operations via a virtual reality program used to train doctors in laparoscopic surgery, a form of minimally invasive surgery performed with tiny incisions and a fiber-optic camera.

As late as 1 p.m., the surgeons made more errors during the procedure than they did while performing the same operation on the previous day, before drinking. And they were consistently less efficient and less safe when performing a task that involved burning away tissue.

(The surgeons also made more errors at 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., although the differences were too small to be considered statistically significant.)

A second dinner-and-drinks experiment -- this one involving a group of surgery trainees and a control group that did not drink -- found similar differences in next-day performance between the two groups. The findings appear in the Archives of Surgery.

Most patients will agree that a surgeon who's even slightly bleary-eyed is bad news. But it's not clear if the performance lapses seen in the study would be meaningful in real-world operating rooms, says surgeon Emily Boyle, the lead author of the study and a researcher at the Royal College of Surgeons, in Dublin, Ireland.

"Some of the skills required to operate were impaired in the study, but it is difficult to say with certainty how this would translate into real clinical performance," she says.

And although Breathalyzer tests administered before the 9 a.m. procedure failed to detect any blood alcohol content, or BAC, in the study participants, except for one -- who had a BAC that exceeded the legal limit for driving -- Boyle stresses that the surgeons were "tested after a night of excessive drinking. Moderate or mild drinking the night before working might have a lesser -- or no -- effect."

Nevertheless, the findings are worrisome enough that Boyle and her colleagues recommend that surgeons consider abstaining from alcohol on the nights before operating.

Currently there are no guidelines for surgeons comparable to the so-called "bottle to throttle" rules that prohibit commercial airplane pilots from flying within eight hours of their last drink, the study notes.

Although their findings don't provide enough evidence to support a "bottle to scalpel" policy, Boyle and her coauthors call for a "higher level of personal vigilance" from surgeons and others who perform medical procedures.

"It is likely that surgeons are unaware that next-day surgical performance may be compromised as a result of significant alcohol intake," they write

http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/careers.html

Man attacks wife during divorce hearing in judge's chambers

Bond set at $1 million on Saturday

Paul Henry Gonzalez (Broward Sheriff's Office handout, Sun Sentinel / April 15, 2011)

Tonya Alanez and Linda Trischitta, Sun Sentinel

2:30 p.m. EDT, April 16, 2011

FORT LAUDERDALE—

 

Bond was set at $1 million Saturday for an ex-Marine who viciously attacked his wife during a final divorce hearing in a judge's chambers Friday morning, splitting her lip, causing her head to swell and bruise and leading to her hospitalization, authorities said.

Paul Henry Gonzalez Jr., 28, of Fort Lauderdale, had to be subdued with a stun gun and is being held at the Main Jail on charges of felony battery, domestic violence and resisting arrest without violence, according to a police report.

Catherine Ann Scott-Gonzalez, 23, also a former Marine, was rushed to Holy Cross Hospital where she is bruised and swollen but in stable condition with facial fractures, a torn lip and a broken nose, said her boyfriend, Brennan Worsencroft, 30.

She will be held in the intensive care unit overnight to monitor for brain trauma, said Worsencroft, who witnessed the attack.

Scott's attorney, Michael Dunleavy, described the assault in Broward County Judge Ronald Rothschild's chambers as "unexpected" and "surreal."

"He was punching with a true vengeance. It was vicious," said Dunleavy, who intervened and held Gonzalez in a bear hug until deputies arrived. "He was in a rage."

The couple was married in 2006 and have a 1-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old son.

Dunleavy said Gonzalez, who did not have an attorney, balked at paying child support and having a judge tell him when he could or couldn't visit his children and stormed out of the chambers. He returned to shout something about not obeying any orders, Dunleavy said, and again retreated.

Gonzalez raced back in, and "without provocation" began pummeling Scott with closed fists, according to a police report.

Gonzalez rushed Scott from behind, grabbed her by the neck and repeatedly hit her on the side of her face. The first blow knocked her unconscious, Worsencroft, the boyfriend, said.

"I'm in shock and disbelief," Worsencroft said. "I didn't think anybody could take it to that extreme, much less in a judge's chambers at that. Words, to be honest with you, could not describe what went on."

Dunleavy wrapped his arms around Gonzalez until deputies arrived, according to the police report.

Meanwhile, Scott collapsed in courtroom clerk Elana Mae Allen's arms, a pool of blood forming near the judge's chair, Dunleavy said.

When deputies tried to handcuff Gonzalez, he threw them off until they eventually pinned him on the judge's conference table and shocked him twice with a stun gun, according to Dunleavy and the police report.

"It was surreal," Dunleavy said. "To see that violence play out in a judge's chambers is somewhat surreal."

Because there are matters yet pending in the case, Rothschild declined to go into any details about the attack.

"It was totally unanticipated," he said. "It was just an unfortunate incident by somebody just stressed out in the heat of the moment."

At some Virginia churches, guns are an invisible part of the routine

Susan Kinzie, Sunday, April 17, 8:24 PM

Washington Post

Parishioners carried Bibles in embroidered cases, babies with ribbons in their hair, and flutes, violins and sheet music into Immanuel Bible Church for Palm Sunday services.

And a few carried guns, tucked into waistbands, hidden under suit jackets.

At least a dozen members of this Springfield congregation routinely bring concealed weapons to services, said the Rev. Steve Holley, the church’s pastor of ministries. Since the Virginia attorney general published an advisory opinion last week on weapons in houses of worship, Holley wonders whether more of his flock will have “a Bible in one holster and a handgun in the other as they come to church.”

Virginia law bars guns in religious meetings unless the person has a “good and sufficient reason” to carry a weapon. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) wrote that personal protection meets the legal standard as a reason to carry a firearm. He said, however, that a church can choose to ban guns on its property.

His opinion sparked strong responses. Some called it an affront to the tradition of the church as a sanctuary from violence. Others said: “Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition!”

Although gun issues are particularly raw in Virginia — in part because of the way the commonwealth’s population and culture are changing — guns and churches have been together a long time there.

In the earliest days, firearms and religion were enormously important to Virginians, with residents expected to own guns and practice shooting regularly and to worship publicly. Requiring people to attend church and serve in militias bound the community together.

A 1632 law in Virginia required men to bring their guns to church on Sundays. The law was passed at a time of great fragility for the colony, said S. Max Edelson, an associate professor of history at the University of Virginia, when the English colonists had been under fierce assault by Indian tribes.

“In case of an attack on Sunday, when everyone is assembled at church, they don’t have to disperse to get their arms,” Edelson said.

Now, in many parts of Virginia, people carry guns openly at places such as grocery stores, parks and some polling places. Some conceal the weapons if they have a permit to do so. The Rev. Jonathan Barton, head of the Virginia Council of Churches, told of a groom who wanted to keep his gun in its holster during his wedding ceremony.

But as more people move into the state and the culture shifts from rural to urban — especially in Northern Virginia — the way people see guns has been changing, said John Casteen IV, an assistant professor at Sweet Briar College.

Debates over the balance between individual freedom and collective good play out every year in the General Assembly and elsewhere. Some people assume public safety is greater if more people are armed, but others assume the opposite.

Barton was saddened by Cuccinelli’s opinion. “A house of worship is for celebration of life, and to carry a concealed weapon into that space is to violate that sacred space.”

Philip Van Cleave, of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, said people have been carrying concealed weapons to church for years because of the threat of terrorism and church shootings across the country.

“Al-Qaeda has been our reason, as well as many of the recent church shootings around the country,” he said. “Think of it this way: If saving your own life isn’t a ‘good and sufficient reason’ to carry a gun, then what else could possibly qualify?”

At Immanuel Bible, where a breeze sent pear-tree flower petals floating down on families greeting one another before services, parishioners echoed that debate.

“Guns in a church? Why?” said Samy Youssef, a member from Alexandria. “God is our protector. He is our savior.”

But Charles Whitener, who lives near Mount Vernon and has been meaning to get a concealed-weapon permit, said: “After some of the horrible things that have happened in other churches, I think the attorney general did the right thing.”

Church officials declined to identify members who they knew had guns with them; when approached, one member who had a weapon declined to comment.

Holley said that many in the congregation, which has a large number of military families, law enforcement officers and hunters, probably would agree with the attorney general’s opinion.

“The real sad thing for all of us in this is it’s an indication of where our culture is — that public meeting areas, churches, schools, town halls, malls are threats for terrorism,” Holley said. Two years ago, he said, a preacher in Illinois was gunned down in the pulpit.

The Rev. Tom Joyce, a fellow Immanuel pastor, said there was a case in Colorado in which a gunman began spraying bullets in a church but was shot and killed by someone in attendance.

“We rely 100 percent, before any weapon, in the power of the Holy Spirit to protect us,” he said. “It’s also good to have some people here on campus” who are trained and armed.

The people they know are carrying guns are military or law enforcement professionals, Holley said. Of course, with concealed weapons, it’s hard to know who’s armed. “We don’t frisk them, we don’t ask them if they’re packing heat or not.”

He hopes people will keep their guns hidden while at Immanuel. And he hopes that those who do carry will be people who have a license and not those who got their guns illegally.

On Sunday, the choir sang about the crucifixion, and people bowed their heads over well-worn Bibles to pray. A drama with a scene of a military funeral at Arlington National Cemetery was acted out. Joyce, who spent 25 years in the Navy, preached about Christ’s love.

Afterward, talking with Holley at the front of the sanctuary, he spun around suddenly, lifting his blazer to show the back of his waistband. Joyce laughed: No gun.