Residents have come together in compassion and grief in the absence of heated rhetoric about religion, terrorism and demonizing the gunman

Pastor Brad Burkholder is less interested in what the recent massacre in his Kansas town says about the shooter than in what the shooting says about humanity.



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“Whenever I hear people ask: ‘Why do bad things happen to good people?’ I ask: ‘Who are the good people?’”

Brow furrowed, deep in thought, he stares at the floor of the Hesston Mennonite Brethren church. “Nobody deserved this, but instead of thinking ‘I could never do that’, instead I pray that it’s never me. Because I could get to a place where that could be me.”

Unlike the Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado in December, or the attack on a government building in San Bernardino in December, Thursday’s violence in Hesston, Kansas, which took the lives of four and injured 14, lacks a political charge. Kansas’s relatively lax gun laws are relevant, but Cedric Ford was not a legal gun owner and the woman who supplied his guns has been arrested.

Ford shot dead Josh Higbee, Renee Benjamin and Brian Sadowsky. He was then shot dead himself. But in the absence of heated rhetoric about religion, terrorism or abortion, the citizens of Hesston have come together in compassion and grief.

On Friday night, residents with tears in their eyes and candles in their hands gather at Heritage Park. Dozens of Hustler lawnmowers (which are made at the Excel Industries factory where the shooting took place) are parked on lawns, displaying messages of sorrow and strength.

There is very little anger or thirst for retribution, but instead sober discussion about mental illness and the stigma that keeps people from seeking help.

“If you admit that you have anger that you can’t control, that’s seen as weakness,” says pastor Burkholder. “Our culture applauds strength and having it together. And weakness is frowned upon.”

Instead of framing the shooter as a villain who did an evil deed, Burkholder empathizes with him. Burkholder is not a violent man, but he says he often struggles with other temptations and as a Mennonite Christian, he sees all sin as equal.

“As a pastor, I often talk about dealing with depression and anger, because there is help available,” he says. “I’ve dealt with depression and suicidal thoughts as an adult, and before I saw a counselor I held a lot of stereotypes about people going crazy. I wish when I was a kid somebody would’ve told me they were a follower a Christ, and they still struggled with sin.”

In this small Kansas town of 3,700, it is difficult to find anyone who will speak ill of the man who shot a semiautomatic rifle at pedestrians from his moving vehicle, before arriving at his place of employment seemingly to execute coworkers at random.

At Casey’s general store, across the street from Excel Industries, an employee who asks not to be identified says she was friends with Ford. He was not a monster, she says, but a very kind man who often comforted her in times of distress. With tears in her eyes, she says she looked forward to seeing him and the other workers when their shifts ended.

‘One of my friends was shot four times’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mourners hug during a candlelight vigil at Heritage Park in Hesston on Friday. Photograph: Travis Heying/AP

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Hesston, a 120-year-old town, is no stranger to tragedy. In 1990, one of the most violent tornadoes in history blasted through, obliterating 226 homes and 21 businesses. Between 1974 and 1991, just north of Hesston in Sedgwick County, Boy Scout leader Dennis Rader (aka “the BTK killer”) murdered 10 people. Until 2005, when he was arrested and imprisoned, he sent letters about his crimes to the media.

“I’ve heard a couple people say, ‘Fuck him, I’m glad he’s gone,’” says a Hesston resident, who also asks not to be named and will be referred to here as Martin, of Rader. “And I just don’t see it that way. I see a sick individual that needed serious help. And it breaks my heart to think that he didn’t have anyone that he felt he could go to with that problem, or anyone to tell him he needed help.”

Martin’s empathy extends to Ford, who was a casual acquaintance at Excel.

“Nobody ever says: ‘This will never happen to me,’ but they never think it will happen to them,” he says, his face twitching with grief.

Martin was operating a forklift at Excel on Thursday, when he heard shots fired elsewhere in the building. Without bothering to turn off the machine, he helped usher his coworkers out of a nearby exit, leading them to safety at a trailer park down the road before returning to the scene. Police had arrived; Martin used his sweater as a tourniquet on the leg of an injured man.

“One of my friends was shot four times, and later that night one of the guys told me he’d died,” Martin says. “It wasn’t until the next day that one of my buddies told me he’d survived. And if that doesn’t prove there’s a God, nothing will.”

After a large team of law enforcement officers secured the area, Martin and several other employees gathered outside the building, taking stock of who was missing and who was accounted for.

“Someone asked the question ‘Is the shooter dead?’ And the trooper said ‘Yes, the shooter was shot by law enforcement.’ Everybody was clapping and applauding, and I was like, ‘Dude, that’s loss of life. Why are you applauding the loss of life?’

“Everybody deals with stress in different ways, and I get that, and I’m not giving them a hard time, but the way I saw it is: we lost life.”

Everybody sees the guy who shot up a place. Nobody’s seeing the illness. Nobody’s seeing the mental problems that he had Martin, Hesston resident

While Martin says he was not close to Ford, he is committed to remembering him as the guy with the 2014 Dodge Challenger who proudly displayed his massive car stereo, with which he entered sound system competitions.

“That’s who I knew, and that’s who I’m going to remember,” he says. “But everybody sees the guy who shot up a place. Nobody’s seeing the illness. Nobody’s seeing the mental problems that he had.

“That’s what I want people to remember, that depression and alcoholism are two very serious problems that often get overlooked.”

Since Thursday, pastor Burkholder’s church has made itself available for any Hesston residents in need of counselling. He says he planned a Sunday sermon on the book of Ezra, but in light of the tragedy he will be preaching on the inner peace offered by the Holy Spirit and the communal strength that can be found in the aftermath of tragedy. He feels, he says, just as secure in Hesston as he ever did.

“I have a 21-year-old daughter,” he says, “and even when she was five years old I knew she could walk home from school and I wouldn’t worry about anything bad happening to her. For me, that hasn’t changed.

“I refuse to be afraid. I don’t want to be naive, but at some level you have to trust people – and I trust the people of Hesston.”