Man charged with murder in Illinois church shooting

EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. — A man was charged with murder today for allegedly shooting a southern Illinois pastor through the heart during Sunday services.

Terry Sedlacek, 27, was charged with first-degree murder and aggravated battery, said Stephanee Smith of the Madison County state’s attorney’s office.

Authorities did not comment on a possible motive or on the gunman’s mental state. “We’re still not sure what the reasoning was,” Illinois State Police Lt. Scott Compton said today.

Sedlacek once suffered bouts of erratic behavior his family said was due to Lyme disease. One expert said it would be unlikely that the tick-borne illness would make someone so violent.

“Lyme disease doesn’t cause people to shoot people,” said Dr. Eugene Shapiro, a Lyme disease expert at Yale University.

Sedlacek, of Troy, allegedly strode toward the Rev. Fred Winters shortly after 8 a.m. Sunday, exchanged words with him, then fired a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol until it jammed. Winters, 45, died of a single shot to the heart, the coroner said today.

After the shooting, the gunman pulled out a knife but was tackled by two worshippers, and all three were stabbed, police said. The gunman suffered “a pretty serious wound to the neck” while one worshipper had lower back wounds, said Illinois State Police Director Larry Trent.

Sedlacek was hospitalized in serious condition in St. Louis, and the judge ordered him held without bond.

Churchgoers knocked the gunman between sets of pews, then held him down until police arrived, said member Don Bohley, who was just outside the sanctuary when the shooting began.

A 39-year-old congregant, Terry Bullard, also remained in serious condition this morning. The third victim, Keith Melton, was treated and released.

Authorities said they didn’t know whether Winters, a married father of two, knew the gunman.

Several visitors stopped by the church today — one with tear-reddened eyes who dropped off a card. All declined to comment, as did a church receptionist.

None of the 150 worshippers attending the Sunday service seemed to recognize the gunman, and investigators did not know details of Winters’ conversation with him, Trent said, but they planned to review an audio recording of the service.

Winters deflected the first of the gunman’s four rounds with a Bible, sending a confetti-like spray of paper into the air in a horrifying scene worshippers initially thought was a skit, police said.

“We just sat there waiting for what comes next, not realizing that he had wounded the pastor,” said Linda Cunningham, whose husband is a minister of adult education at the church.

Winters had stood on an elevated platform to deliver his sermon about finding happiness in the workplace — titled “Come On, Get Happy” — and managed to run halfway down the sanctuary’s side aisle before collapsing after the attack, Cunningham said.

Autopsy results showed that Winters was hit with one bullet that went straight through his heart, Madison County Coroner Steve Nonn said today. Nonn would not comment on the distance between the gunman and the pastor.

Trent said investigators found no immediate evidence of a criminal background for the suspect.

Winters was former president of the Illinois Baptist State Association and an adjunct professor for Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, according to the church’s Web site.

He hosted Pizza with the Pastor dinners in his home, and the church organized bowling parties for fathers and daughters, karate classes and a golf league.

The church sits along a busy two-lane highway on the east side of Maryville, a fast-growing village of more than 7,000 about 20 miles northeast of St. Louis. A farm sits directly across from the church, but subdivisions of newer homes can been easily seen from every side.

“Things like this just don’t happen in Maryville,” Mayor Larry Gulledge said. “We’ve lost one the pillars of our community, one of our leaders.”

Sedlacek was featured last year in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article detailing his battle with Lyme disease. In the article, his mother said the disease left lesions on his brain and that doctors had diagnosed him as mentally ill before discovering the disease.

In the August 2008 article, Ruth Abernathy said her son was taking several medications and had difficulty speaking after contracting the tick-borne illness.

A phone call to a number listed for Robert and Ruth Abernathy in Troy rang unanswered today.

Untreated Lyme disease can spread to the bones, heart and nervous system. It can cause brain inflammation and in rare cases, problems with concentration and short-term memory, and sleep disturbances, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Web site.

Other rare nervous-system symptoms include severe headaches and neck stiffness, which can be treated with antibiotics, Shapiro said.

There are also isolated reports of hallucinations and psychotic illness blamed on Lyme disease. But these are controversial and some experts, including Shapiro, believe affected people likely had pre-existing mental problems or were misdiagnosed and never had Lyme disease.