Chicago Area Local News

EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. (CBS) ― Prosecutors have charged a 27-year-old Troy, Ill., man in the fatal shooting of a southern Illinois pastor who was shot through the heart during Sunday services. 

Terry Sedlacek is charged with first-degree murder and aggravated battery. Prosecutors are not commenting on any possible motive in the attack, said Stephanee Smith of the Madison County state's attorney's office, but they are saying the suspect walked into the church with enough ammunition to kill 30 people.

Prosecutors contend Sedlacek had three magazines with ten rounds each for the handgun he carried into First Baptist Church of Maryville Sunday.

"We're still not sure what the reasoning was," Illinois State Police Lt. Scott Compton said Monday.

Sedlacek is accused of killing the Rev. Fred Winters, who was shot during his sermon at the sprawling First Baptist Church in Maryville. Smith said Sedlacek also is accused of wounding two parishioners who fought to subdue him after he allegedly pulled a knife. 

Chief Judge Ann Callis ordered Sedlacek held without bond even as he remained hospitalized Monday in serious condition. Authorities said after the shooting, he pulled out a knife and stabbed himself in the throat while being wrestled to the ground by two worshippers, who also were wounded.

Sedlacek referred to Sunday as "death day" on a planner found in his Troy home, a prosecutor said Monday.

Madison County State's Attorney William Mudge did have details on the reference entered in the day planner, only that it singled out "death day."

"The only thing I can really comment on is he came armed with many rounds of ammunition and a knife, and I think we can surmise that more bloodshed may have occurred," Mudge said Monday.

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

Shortly after 8 a.m. on Sunday morning, the gunman strode down the aisle of the sprawling First Baptist Church shortly after 8 a.m., exchanged words with the Rev. Fred Winters then fired a .45 caliber semiautomatic pistol into his chest until it jammed and churchgoers wrestled him to the ground as he brandished a knife, said Illinois State Police Director Larry Trent.

One hundred fifty churchgoers were listening to pastor Fred Winters give his Sunday sermon when the first gunshot burst through the Bible he was holding.

"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.

"There was like confetti all over the stage and they shot his Bible and it just obliterated it. It just went everywhere," witness and church member Claudia Bohley said.

"The suspect raised his hand, fired his first shot, hit the pastor's Bible, it hit the very top of the Bible," said Trent.

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, Cunningham said.

The suspect's gun jammed after the fourth shot, giving church members a chance to stop him.

"He pulled out a knife and injured himself and then several people tried to grab him and two of those people were slightly injured by the knife as well," said Illinois State Police Master Trooper Ralph Trimmins.

Two parishioners tackled the gunman as he pulled the knife, and all three were stabbed -- the gunman suffered "a pretty serious wound to the neck" while one parishioner had lower back wounds, Trent said.

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. 

Only one day after the pastor was killed, emotions were still raw among members of the southern Illinois church.

Twenty-three-year-old congregant Gwen Lawson visited the First Baptist Church in Maryville on Monday with her 1-year-old son.

She fought back tears and says she still hasn't fully processed what happened when 45-year-old pastor Fred Winters was shot and killed in the front of about 150 worshippers.

Lawson's husband ministers to college-age students at the church, and she says she's praying for the shooter as well as the congregation.

An attorney for the 27-year-old man accused of gunning down the Illinois pastor says his client's mental health has been deteriorated by Lyme disease.

Edwardsville attorney Ron Slemer tells the Belleville News-Democrat that Terry Sedlacek's mental and physical condition have suffered since he was bitten by a tick several years ago.

Slemer also says Sedlacek's family is "very sorry" for the loss of pastor Winters. He says family members spent Sunday evening with a pastor.

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 Monday.

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 federal 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, said Dr. Eugene Shapiro, a Lyme disease expert at Yale University.

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.

Shapiro said blaming the tick-borne illness for violent behavior is a stretch.
"Lyme disease doesn't cause people to shoot people," Shapiro said.

First Baptist had an average attendance of 32 people when Winters became senior pastor in 1987; it now has about 1,200 members, according to the church's Web site. Winters was former president of the Illinois Baptist State Association and an adjunct professor for Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, according to the site.

A statement on First Baptist's Web site asked for prayers for Winters' family, the parishioners who tackled the gunman, the gunman and his family, and for church members. 

Last month, a man shot and killed himself in front of a cross inside televangelist Robert H. Schuller's Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif. In November, a gunman killed his estranged wife in a New Jersey church vestibule as Sunday services let out.

In July 2008, two people were killed and six wounded in a shooting rampage at the Tennessee Valley United Unitarian Church in Knoxville, Tenn. An out of work truck driver who police say targeted the church for its liberal leanings pleaded guilty to the shootings and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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