Texas Woman Loses Friend In Shooting At First Baptist Church

NPR's Noel King speaks with Michele Nicholson, who lives about 10 minutes away from First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs. Nicholson said her friend was shot during Sunday's deadly shooting.

NOEL KING, HOST:

I'm going to turn us now to Michele Nicholson. Michele is a resident of La Vernia. That is less than a 10-minute drive from the church. Michele, are you on the line?

MICHELE NICHOLSON: Yes, I am.

KING: Michele, first of all, thank you so much for joining us.

NICHOLSON: You're welcome.

KING: I understand that a friend of yours was shot at the church this morning. Do I have that right?

NICHOLSON: Yes. In fact, I think it - she was actually shot at the Valero across the street from the church.

KING: What is the Valero?

NICHOLSON: Yeah, they haven't covered anything on the news that I've seen about Valero, but that's where we always go to get sodas or coffee in the morning or whatever. And from my understanding, that's where she was hurt. And her children are also in hospital at the moment.

KING: My God.

NICHOLSON: And I have no idea. I have no idea what their status is at this point.

KING: How did you learn that your friend had been - do I have it right, she's been injured?

NICHOLSON: She's been shot.

KING: She's been shot. And how did how did you hear?

NICHOLSON: My girlfriend called me this morning because that's how our community is. It's like when you see something or hear something, you call your friends and you tell them right away and - yeah.

KING: Can you tell me...

NICHOLSON: So...

KING: Oh, go ahead, please.

NICHOLSON: That was it. I mean - yeah.

KING: The community you're describing sounds very small. It sounds very tight-knit. Tell me a little bit about Sutherland Springs.

NICHOLSON: It's a very small, small town, and we all know each other. We - I know everybody that works at that gas station. We wave when we go by. Like, we all look out for each other. So, to me, this is like shocking. I can't even imagine like what is going on right now with this. I mean, I'm really like in a state of like - numb at the moment over it.

KING: You absolutely must be. Have you heard anything from officials down there? Has there been any official response, any guidance on what you guys should do next?

NICHOLSON: No, we have not. We went by there earlier at about, I would say, like, 3 o'clock. And the Valero parking lot was covered in police cars. And you couldn't even pull in there if you wanted to. It was so full of just stuff going on and flashing lights and everything. So obviously, the crime scene, we weren't even going to attempt to go in there. But yeah, it's pretty bad. I mean, I think it rocked our community like seriously.

KING: Well, it certainly sounds like it. And, Michele Nicholson, we want to thank you so much for joining with us. I do hope we have a chance to talk to you again soon, get an update on how your friend and her children are doing. Michele Nicholson is a resident of La Vernia, just up the street from Sutherlands Springs. Thanks, Michele.

NICHOLSON: You're welcome.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.