Matthew Murray and YWAM and NEW LIFE CHURCH: Overview Article at TIME

At Youth With A Mission,

Matthew Murray had reportedly been trying to ask for a place to stay, but when Johnson tried to refer him elsewhere, he shot her...
Murray, whose last known address was with his parents in Colorado's Arapahoe County, had apparently brought several smoke bombs with him to New Life. The police bomb squad was reportedly called into his parents' home during a search. Indeed, the police had searched the home of Murray's parents before the New Life incident occurred.

There are several connections between New Life and YWAM (pronounced Why-wham): the missionary training group rents office space at New Life and some of its young trainees attend the church. Murray was reportedly associated with the YWAM Arvada center in 2002. The two murdered sisters were also said to have frequented the same center.

Might there have been some known threat that affected both organizations? At New Life, the security guard who killed Murray had been stationed in the church's central Rotunda as part of an evacuation-and-defense plan that the church's head of security implemented when news of the YWAM shooting broke. But rather than indicating a deeper connection between YWAM and New Life, Boyd said that the enhanced security was simply a precaution. "That's the reality of our world," he said on Monday. "I don't think any of us grew up in churches where that was the reality, but today it is."

Matthew Murray Shot Himself After Being Taken Down by Jeanne Assam

An autopsy determined that Murray killed himself with a bullet to the head after he was brought down by gunfire from a volunteer security guard at the church, authorities said.

Rantings of Matthew Murray

Matthew Murray reportedly ranted prior to his attacks in Colorado at Youth With A Mission in Denver and New Life Church in Colorado Springs:

"You Christians brought this on yourselves," Murray reportedly wrote on a website for people who have left Pentecostal and fundamentalist religious organisations, shortly before the second of his two attacks.

"I'm coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill. ... God, I can't wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don't care if I live or die in the shoot-out.

"All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you ... as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world."

Source: KUSA TV

Matthew Murray, in these writings, sounds like a terrorist to me, a person motivated by hatred of others' religious beliefs. Someone who has decided that he has a right, perhaps even a responsibility to set himself above others. He sounds like someone who has put himself in the place of God, deciding who has the right to live and who must die.

Matthew Murray Shot Himself In the Head

Judith Kohler writes:

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The man who killed four people at a church and missionary training center shot himself in the head and died after being hit by shots from a church security officer, police said Tuesday.

Matthew Murray, 24, was struck multiple times by a security officer at New Life Church Sunday, but his death was ruled a suicide, the El Paso County Coroner's Office concluded after an autopsy.

Murray shot himself in the head, said police Sgt. Skip Arms.

Volunteer security guard Jeanne Assam shot Murray after he entered the church. Though investigators had earlier suggested he killed himself, they credited Assam's bravery with averting a greater tragedy.

Account of Jeanne Assam's Response to Matthew Murray

Early on Sunday morning, Matthew Murray, 24, the home-schooled son of devoutly Christian parents, had shot and killed two people at the Youth With a Mission training center in a Denver suburb. Twelve hours later, police say, he drove to Colorado Springs and started shooting in the parking lot of the New Life church before walking inside the church building as a service was letting out, shooting as he went.

He took two more lives at the church. He was in the building when Bourbannais (a member of New Life Church who is a Vietnam veteran) arrived.

“I ran and heard the gunfire and it was roaring like thunder,” Bourbannais told Meredith Vieira (TODAY co-host).

He saw a male security guard with his gun drawn, but the guard was not firing at the Murray.

“I said, ‘Gimme your handgun. I’ve been in combat. I’m going to take this guy out,’ ” he said, adding he repeated the request four or five times, but the guard would not hand him the weapon.

Bourbannais was behind a pillar at the time, deciding what to do next.

“The only thing I could think to do was walk out from the pillar so the gunman would see me,” he said. “He was a man in black, but he sure wasn’t Johnny Cash.

“So I yelled, ‘Coward!’ stood out, and our eyes met and he lifted his rifle, fired, and I took a few fragments – very minor – in my left forearm.”

Bourbannais stepped behind the pillar again and repeated his demand that the security guard give him a gun so he could take the shooter out. When he got no response, Bourbannais stepped out from behind the pillar to confront Murray again.

At that point, another security guard, 42-year-old Jeanne Assam, arrived with her gun drawn. Unlike the male guard, she was using hers.

“They were engaged in a firefight. He was firing. She was firing,” Bourbannais said. “And she was completely exposed. I was in Vietnam for 14 months in combat, and it’s the bravest thing I’ve ever witnessed. She kept yelling, ‘Surrender,’ and returned fire the complete time.”

Bourbannais walked parallel to her toward Murray as Assam shot him.

“As he slumped down and his head tilted, I said to her, ‘That’s the calmest, bravest thing I‘ve ever seen. How did you do it?’ “ he said. “She said ‘I was praying and asking the Holy Spirit the entire time to guide me.’ ”

Vieira asked Bourbannais if he realized that he could have been killed.

“I figured my chances were 30 percent,” he said, as calm as if he were describing a trip to the corner store.

“It’s the grace of God,” he said. “Like Jeanne, we’re both followers of Christ. I want to give God the glory, because I’m convinced He spared us that day.”

Beyond Imagining: Family Loses Two Daughters in Colorado Springs' Shooting

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO -- A family is grieving Monday after their two teenage girls were killed in Sunday's shooting spree at the New Life Church.

"I'm asking Colorado Springs and the country to please pray for that family this morning because they're going through a very difficult time," said Reverend Brady Boyd, the senior pastor at New Life Church.

Authorities say 18-year-old Stephanie Works and 16-year-old Rachael Works died from their injuries after a gunman opened fire outside New Life Church on Sunday.

Jeanne Assam: Security Guard at New Life Church

Security Guard at New Life Church of Colorado Springs, Colorado who confronted and shot Matthew Murray, the 24 year old shooter. Note in the following report that Assam and other volunteer security guards at the church are trained and licensed. Assam acknowledges God's help and presence, but she is not a vigilante.

Bea Karnes writes:

Assam said that it felt as if it was just she, the gunman and God in the church. "I give the credit to God. I say that very humbly," said Assam. "Because of the fire power he had versus what I had, (it) was God. I did not run away, and I didn't think for even a minute to run away. I just knew that I was given the assignment to end this before it got too much worse....My hands weren't even shaking."

Assam acknowledged that it was loud and scary. She repeated "so loud" three times during the news conference.

Assam is part of a security detail at the church that's licensed, trained and equipped with firearms. They're all church members who worship at one service, while being assigned to provide security at a different service. Assam didn't hesitate to shoot the gunman. "I just knew that I wasn't going to wait for him to do further damage," she said.

Another Young Murderer: Matthew Murray Identified As Colorado Killer

JUDITH KOHLER writes:

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The gunman believed to have killed four people at a megachurch and a missionary training school had been thrown out of the school a few years ago and had been sending it hate mail, police said in court papers Monday.

The gunman was identified as Matthew Murray, 24, who was home-schooled in what a friend said was a deeply religious Christian household. Murray's father is a neurologist and a leading multiple-sclerosis researcher.

Five people — including Murray — were killed, and five others wounded Sunday in the two eruptions of violence 12 hours and 65 miles apart.