Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 324, Ed. 1 Monday, June 22, 2015 Page: 3 of 21
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NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL
3A
Denton Record-Chronicle
Monday, June 22, 2015
Welcoming spirit returns as church reopens
By Phillip Lucas
Associated Press
CHARLESTON, S.C. -
Emanuel African Methodist
Episcopal Church opened its
tall, wooden doors to the world
Sunday, embracing strangers
who walked in from the street or
tuned in from home for the first
worship service since a white
gunman was accused of killing
nine black church members.
It was that same hospitality
that allowed the suspected gun-
man to be welcomed into a Bible
study for about an hour before
he allegedly stood up, made ra-
cially offensive remarks and
opened fire in the church known
as “Mother Emanuel” because it
is one of the oldest black congre-
gations in the South.
“I was so pleased when au-
thorities told us you can go back
into Mother Emanuel’ to wor-
ship,” said the Rev. Norvel Goff a
presiding elder of the 7th District
AME Church in South Carolina,
before adding a note of defiance
to a service sprinkled with themes
of love, recovery and healing.
“Some folks might need
some more time in order to walk
in. But for those of us who are
here this morning... because the
doors of Mother Emanuel are
open on this Sunday, it sends a
message to every demon in hell
and on earth.”
The church’s air conditioning
did little to fight the heat of extra
bodies in the sanctuary. There
was fervent singing and
shouting, so much so that many
congregants waved small fans in
front of their faces.
Despite the heaviness in the
air, many stood — some holding
small children — to shout their
praises or raise their hands to-
ward the church’s vaulted ceil-
ing. For added security, police
officers stood watch over wor-
shippers.
Some congregation mem-
bers stood to applaud when Goff
thanked law enforcement for
their response to the shooting.
Goff was appointed to lead
the historic Charleston church
after Emanuel’s senior pastor,
the Rev. Clementa Pinckney,
was fatally shot during the mas-
T
“Some folks might
need some more
time in order to
walk in. But for
those of us who are
here this morning...
because the doors
of Mother Emanuel
are open on this
Sunday, it sends a
message to every
demon in hell and
on earth. ”
— Rev. Norvel Goff, a presiding
elder of the 7th District AME
Church in South Carolina
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of hate, that kind of evil — we
need God, y’all. We need Jesus,”
McDonald said.
The tragedy resonated far be-
yond urban areas. Congregants
at a small church in rural north-
central Pennsylvania signed a
condolence card to send to
Emanuel. The Rev. Nancy light
Hardy of St. James United
Church of Christ said she debat-
J-'EfSE
IE?
Photos by David Goldman/AP
A parishioner prays at the empty seat of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney at the Emanuel A.M.E. Churchon Sunday, four days after a
mass shooting that claimed the lives of Pinckney and eight others, in Charleston, S.C.
ed mailing the card, which
seemed “pitiful and lame” when
set against the “inconceivable”
killings.
cover up the graffiti, police said.
Photos on local news web-
sites from before the tarp was
put up showed the graffiti in
bright red paint, along with the
message “This is the problem. #
RACIST.”
Around the country, pastors
asked people to pray for Charles-
ton. In Atlanta’s 1st Iconium
Baptist Church, a predominant-
ly black church with a tradition
of speaking out for social justice,
the Rev. Timothy McDonald
told his congregation Sunday
that he had met Pinckney last
April during a visit to Columbia,
South Carolina, with a group of
ministers.
‘You talk about a promising
young man,” he said, expressing
shock at the manner of Pinck-
ney’s death.
“How do you sit in a Bible
Study next to a pastor for almost
an hour and then you just stand
up and shoot to kill? That kind
sacre. A black sheet was draped
over Pinckney’s usual chair,
which sat empty. At least one pa-
rishioner kneeled down in front
of it and prayed.
Pinckney was also a state
senator and married father of
two children. Goff acknowl-
edged Father’s Day and said:
“The only way evil can triumph
is for good folks to sit down and
do nothing.”
As Emanuel’s congregation
belted out a gospel hymn,
church bells rang throughout
the “Holy City” — nicknamed
because of the numerous
churches here. Later Sunday,
people were expected to gather
on the Arthur Ravenel Bridge to
join hands in solidarity.
The bridge is named after a
former state lawmaker and vocal
Confederate flag supporter. The
slayings have renewed calls for
the flag to be removed from the
South Carolina Statehouse
‘But at least it lets the
Charleston church know that
Christians across the country
are thinking about them,” she
said.
i
The welcoming spirit Roof
exploited before the shooting
was still alive.
Gail Lincoln said she typical-
ly attends another AME church
nearby, but felt compelled to vis-
it Emanuel this week.
“Through all of this, God is
still our refuge,” Lincoln said.
“I’m still heartbroken, but it’s go-
ing to get better. I know it’s going
to take time, day by day.”
As a further sign of resilience,
the church’s Wednesday night
Bible study is expected to con-
tinue as normal next week, said
Emanuel member Harold
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Parishioners sing at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church on Sunday in
Charleston, S.C.
Less than 2 miles from the
grounds, in part because photo-
graphs of Roof in a purported church, someone vandalized a
manifesto showed him holding Confederate monument, spray-
Confederate flags. The 2,500- painting “Black lives Matter” on
word manifesto also contained the statue.
Washington, 75.
“We didn’t change a thing,’
hate-filled writings.
City workers used a tarp to
he said.
for escaped convicts
shifts after possible sighting
BRIEFLY
Supreme Court set to
review abortion law
U.S. AND THE WORLD
New Orleans
Police arrest suspect
in killing of officer
cent years that have placed re-
strictions on when in a preg-
nancy abortions may be per-
formed, imposed limits on
abortions using drugs instead
of surgery, and increased
standards for clinics and the
doctors who work in them.
The Texas case involves
the last of these categories.
The provisions at issue re-
quire clinics to meet hospital-
like surgical standards and al-
so call on doctors who work in
the clinics to have admitting
privileges at a nearby hospi-
tal. Republican presidential
candidate Rick Perry signed
the law in 2013 when he was
the state’s governor.
Backers of the law say those
are common-sense measures
intended to protect women.
Abortion rights groups say the
regulations have only one aim:
to make it harder, if not impos-
sible, for women to get abor-
tions in Texas.
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Abor-
tion is back before the U.S. Su-
preme Court, and the justices
could signal by the end of June
whether they are likely to take
up the biggest case on the con-
tentious subject in nearly a
quarter-century.
If the court steps in, the
hearing and the eventual rul-
ing would come amid the
2016 presidential campaign.
The court is considering
an emergency appeal from
abortion providers in Texas,
who want the justices to block
two provisions of a state law
that already has forced the
closure of roughly half the li-
censed abortion clinics in the
state. Ten of the remaining 19
clinics will have to shut their
doors by July \ without an or-
der from the Supreme Court.
The Texas law is among a
wave of state measures in re-
FRIENDSHIP, N.Y. (AP) -
Investigators tracking two mur-
der convicts who escaped from a
northern New York prison
scoured a rural area near the
Pennsylvania border Sunday,
saying an unconfirmed but cred-
ible report of a sighting had
shifted the search across the
state.
ture until we are confident that
that area is secure,” State Police
Maj. Michael J. Cerretto said at a
news conference Sunday.
Concentrating in the area
along County Route 20 and In-
terstate 86, officers walked rail-
road tracks, checked car trunks
and deployed search dogs as a
helicopter flew back and forth
overhead. At one point, state po-
lice outfitted in camouflage
could be seen heading into some
woods.
But the state police added in
a release Sunday evening that “a
primary focus of the search” is
still the area around far north-
ern Dannemora, where David
Sweat and Richard Matt used
power tools to break out of the
maximum-security Clinton Cor-
rectional Facility on June 6.
If the two escapees are still
together, that’s not surprising,
experts said.
In the wilderness, fugitives
often stick together for survival’s
sake, unless they have planned
to split up and reunite at a camp
or other hideaway, said Patrick
Patten, who trains law enforcers
on woodland tracking.
That can be true in urban set-
tings, too. Five of seven inmates
who broke out of a Texas prison
in December 2000 were staying
in the same Colorado motor
home when authorities caught
up with them about six weeks
later; the other two were cap-
tured together days later in a
nearby hotel.
While escapees may risk
drawing more attention than
they would alone, they may not
separate partly out of concern
that one will blunder, get caught
and give up the other or others,
said Terry Pelz, a former Texas
prison warden who now teaches
criminal justice at the University
of Houston Downtown.
Also, “they probably have an
understanding that they’re bet-
ter off together” because they
can help each other, such as by
trading off lookout duty, he said.
After an intense 24-hour
manhunt Sunday, New Orleans
police arrested a man believed to
have shot and killed a police offi-
cer while wearing handcuffs as
he was being transported to jail.
But questions remain about
where the gun he used to kill Of-
ficer Daryle Holloway, 45, came
from and how he hid from a law
enforcement search that includ-
ed canine, SWAT and helicopter
teams.
About 300 law enforcement
officers searched the neighbor-
ing towns of Amity and Friend-
ship, where two men who re-
sembled the convicts were spot-
ted Saturday near a railroad line
that runs along a county road.
While state police called the
sighting unconfirmed, the in-
tense hunt that had focused for
two weeks around a prison near
the Canadian border was quick-
ly expanded to a rural, moun-
tainous area 350 miles away,
dotted with sheds, trailers, sum-
mer homes and other potential
hideouts.
‘We will search under every
rock, behind every tree and struc-
Turin, Italy
Pope pauses to pray
before Shroud of Turin
Pope Francis paused in silent
prayer before the Shroud of Turin
on Sunday, becoming the latest of
hundreds of thousands of people
who have come this year to Turin’s
cathedral to view the burial linen
some believe covered the body of
Jesus after crucifixion.
Francis sat for several min-
utes before the shroud, con-
tained in a protective glass case.
He lowered his head at times in
apparent reflection and occa-
sionally gazed up at the 14-foot
long cloth. Then he took a few
steps, placed his hand on the
case, and walked away without
comment.
London
Thousands mark summer
solstice at Stonehenge
Thousands of revelers, new-
agers and self-styled Druids de-
scended on the ancient stone cir-
cle at Stonehenge on Sunday,
catching abrief glimpse of the sun
as they marked the summer sol-
stice — the longest day of the year
in the northern hemisphere.
About 23,000 sun-watchers
gathered on the Salisbury Plain,
police said. But with the sun vis-
ible only briefly, the party was
markedly shorter than in past
years. Authorities reported nine
arrests for drug offenses — fewer
than in the past.
Shared threat draws together arch-enemies
Gaza’s 1.8 million people.
On the Israeli side, 73 people,
including 67 soldiers, were
killed in last year’s fighting, and
the summer-long war disrupted
the lives of millions of people as
they coped with repeated rocket
attacks and air-raid sirens. But
Hamas, which seized power in
Gaza eight years ago, has sur-
vived three wars, and the cost of
toppling the group would be ex-
tremely high, so Israel appears
content to contain Hamas and
keep things quiet.
Hamas officials say that ef-
forts are underway, through Qa-
tari mediators, to work out a
long-term cease-fire. The deal
would call for Israel to ease a sti-
ffing blockade on Gaza in ex-
change for Hamas pledges to
disarm, the officials said, speak-
ing on condition of anonymity
because they were discussing
sensitive negotiations. It is un-
clear whether any progress has
been made in the cease-fire ef-
forts, which include Hamas de-
mands to reopen sea and air-
ports in Gaza. Israeli officials de-
clined comment.
In the short run, the biggest
threat to the quiet is a small but
growing number of extremists
in Gaza inspired by the Islamic
State group, who have fired
rockets across the heavily guard-
ed frontier in order to under-
mine Hamas. The militants be-
lieve Hamas is soft on Israel and
has failed to establish an Islamic
state.
By Fares Akram
Associated Press
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip
— Nearly a year after a devastat-
ing war, Israel and Gaza’s Ha-
mas rulers appear to have
formed an unspoken alliance in
a common battle against the
shared threat of jihadis aligned
with the Islamic State group.
While Israel and Hamas re-
main arch-enemies, both have
an interest in preserving an un-
easy calm that has prevailed
since the fighting ended in a
cease-fire last August — a stale-
mate that is largely the result of a
lack of options on either side.
More than 2,200 Palestin-
ians were killed in last year’s
fighting, according to Palestin-
ian officials, and Hamas suffered
heavy losses.
It is isolated internationally,
k.
r _ JB™ -zJki
Khalil Hamra/AP
Palestinian Hamas gunmen ride on the back of a pickup as
they patrol the border with Israel near the southern Gaza
Strip town of Khan Younis on June 10.
That has transformed Israel
and Hamas — bitter enemies for
nearly three decades — into un-
spoken allies against a shared
threat.
Gaza’s economy is in tatters and moved slowly. A renewal of hos-
reconstruction efforts have tilities would be devastating for
— The Associated Press
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 324, Ed. 1 Monday, June 22, 2015, newspaper, June 22, 2015; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1124948/m1/3/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .