“Please keep the leadership of the Taiwanese congregation and Geneva in your prayers as they care for the those traumatized by this shooting,” the presbytery’s Tom Cramer said in a statement on Facebook.
Federal agents from the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives responded. The FBI also sent agents to the scene to assist the sheriff.
On its website, Geneva Presbyterian Church describes its mission as “to remember, tell, and live the way of Jesus by being just, kind, and humble.”
“All are welcome here. Really, we mean that! … Geneva aspires to be an inclusive congregation worshipping, learning, connecting, giving and serving together.”
Violence in houses of worship includes the deadliest shooting inside a church -- the 2017 shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas. A gunman opened fire during a Sunday service at First Baptist Church. More than two dozen people were killed.
In 2015, a shooter fired dozens of rounds during the closing prayer of a 2015 Bible study session at Charleston’s Mother Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina. Nine members of the Black congregation were killed in the racist violence and
the shooter became the first person in the U.S. sentenced to death for a federal hate crime. His appeal remains before the Supreme Court.
The Laguna Woods shooting came a day after
an 18-year-old man shot and killed 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.