Gunman @ MindSay 
I really hope--and we should pray--that this isn’t the beginning of something really ugly in America.
From todays’ CNN website. http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/12/09/colorado.shooting/index.html
Colorado police were searching Sunday for a gunman who opened fire at a live-in training center for Christian missionaries, wounding four youths, a police spokeswoman said.
The gunmen apparently fled on foot after the shooting at the Youth With a Mission Center in the suburban Denver town of Arvada, said spokeswoman Susan Medina.
The suspect is a white male, about 20 years old, said Medina. He may have be wearing glasses and a dark skull cap or beanie. He also may be sporting a beard or mustache, she said.
Police were using dogs in their search efforts and were hoping the fresh snow outside the building may help them track the suspect, Medina said.
There was no immediate word on the condition of the four people who were wounded.
The wounded were transported to area hospitals. It was unclear how many of the wounded were staff members and students, Medina said.
Those not wounded were transported to an off-site location where police are interviewing them, she said.
About 45 people were in the building at the time of the shooting, she said.
The center is home to dozens of young people from all over the world who are training to be Christian missionaries, according to the center's Web site.
I wasn't sure what to post tonight. There are some good things to post and then there are some bad ones. I think I need to exorcise a ghost that's been on my mind lately. Sometimes, we see images that stay with us and bring us bad dreams. This is one of those.
My list of things I've seen that I wish I hadn't #1836:
The man was crouching on the edge of the footpath, pointing his gun up the street at someone or something I couldn't see. He was using the shelter of the building next to him to duck back behind if he needed to. He kept low and fired often, he was fully engaged in his activity. The day was hot and dusty, the air was still and smelled of gunfire and the unique scent of the desert.
Suddenly, the area about the man was peppered with small spouts of dust. I heard the impacts as tiny thumping noises in the near distance. It was obvious that someone, unseen to me or the man was shooting at him. He had obviously been hit several times as he fell slightly to one side and lost his balance, sitting hard on backside. He put down his hand to steady himself.
The really shocking thing about this event, is not that he was shot or that it was a bright, sunny, normal day in Baghdad. The really shocking thing, the thing that gives me nightmares is the look on his face, the look of a man who has been surprised by death. The first peppering of bullets surprised the man so much that he looked about to see what had hit him. He knew something had knocked him off balance but he didn't know what. His face was surprised, his eyebrows raised as if he was asking a question. He wanted to know what had hit him, who had done it. He looked all about him looking for the answer and it came. The realisation that he had been shot came just an instant before a second spray of bullets rained on him.
This man had been so confident that he would always win his battles, that he would survive this war and tell his children about it, that he honestly didn't understand that he'd been shot. The understanding that he was about to be shot again and that he would die this time, came just an instant before a second round of tiny puffs of dust covered him and the area around him. He was just then trying to lift himself off his bottom to scramble to safety. He fell hard to the ground, the way people do when they are shot instantly dead (not catapulted off their feet as in the movies) and the surprised look on his face was soon replaced with the unmistakeable mask of death. The eyes half open, half closed, the mouth slack and all the facial muscles totally relaxed.
That man died in just a moment, a flash of seconds and neither he nor I saw the man that killed him. Death isn't always forwarned, we don't always see what kills us. Sometimes, we die quite unawares.
Before you get the wrong idea, I wasn't there when it happened, I saw it on a tape made by a foreign journalist but it left an deep impression on me. It's one of the tapes you probable won't see on sanitised TV
I hope I can get this out of my mind now.
Lord, what is happening to us?
Father, please comfort the families of those who have lost their precious children. In their grief, may they be aware of Your presence and love. Somehow, Lord, bring Your victory to bear in this awful tragedy.
*Reports continue to come in about this shooting. The report I read this morning said that the girls who were wounded and in the hospital are doing better, thankfully. Lord, please continue to heal them--both physically and psychologically, by Your grace.
BY FRANK WITSIL
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Just as daylight broke the horizon, at about 7:30 a.m. today, the 22-hour standoff between an armed man and police at a Dearborn apartment complex ended. The gunman, who barricaded himself in a closet, gave up his revolver and surrendered.
It had been a long, cold night, filled with anxiety and at least two accidentally fired gunshots, police said.
“He finally decided to come out,” Dearborn Police Chief Michael Celeski said Wednesday, tired after hours of negotiations.
Police took the 39-year-old Detroit man into custody. His name is being withheld by police pending arraignment. The gunman is likely to be charged later today or early tomorrow with armed robbery, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Celeski said the man gave up after police offered him some options, and he realized surrender was the best one.
Police said the man barricaded himself inside a closet at the Windsor at Fairlane Meadow Luxury Apartments at about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, after robbing a nearby video game store, GameStop, at gunpoint. The man, Celeski said, stole a “substantial amount” of cash from the shop, and fled in a car that 911 callers identified as a beige Ford Taurus.
Police pursued the car to the apartment complex located off Mercury Drive.
The man got out and ran into an apartment building, police said.
Once inside the building, police said, the man put the gun to his head and threatened to kill himself.
Throughout the day, Dearborn police took precautions to protect apartment residents and tried to talk the man into surrendering. They closed off the entrance to the complex and asked residents to stay inside their apartments as they surrounded the suspect. Several special response team police officers, wearing helmets, black uniforms and armed with assault weapons and blast shields, positioned themselves outside the apartment building.
The man, police said, holed himself up in a first-floor small storage closet with no heat.
During the night, Celeski said, the man accidentally fired his handgun — twice.
“That’s how we knew it was real,” Celeski said.
Also during the night, police negotiators sent the man a wired telephone so they could talk, instead of shout, to each other.
Celeski would not reveal what the man and the negotiators discussed, but he said the man ultimately decided to surrender. Celeski said that even though there was no way to escape, the gunman had to figure it out in his own mind, on his own timetable, to surrender to police — and not kill himself.
“I’m glad it came to a peaceful end,” Celeski said.