The Unsung Hero. A reflection on the shooting at CrossPointe Church in June 2025.

​On June 22, 2025, Deacon Richard Pryor was running late to church when he noticed an SUV doing donuts on one side of his church. He expressed concern about the inappropriate behavior, especially since it happened during church hours. After the SUV’s last donut, the vehicle drove around to the opposite side of the church near the entrance.
 
Pryor approached the driver of the SUV, asked him if he was okay, and noticed the driver was dressed in fatigues. Getting out of the SUV, the driver pulled out a rifle, put on a tactical vest and ear protection. Pryor at that time did something that can be called nothing but a miracle that saved lives. He ran over the possible shooter. Because of his actions, the shooter did not make it into the church but was confronted by an armed church safety team. After all the shooting stopped, one church member was injured, and the shooter was dead.
 
All through the internet, the headlines were all about how a church security team killed, shot or took out an active shooter at a church in Wayne, MI. It is not until you get into the articles that you find out about Deacon Richard Pryor. My first reaction to the shooting was to be critical of the response of the safety team. Why did the late-running deacon have to be the person who made first contact with the threat? Where was the safety team member who should have been outside watching the perimeter and alerting the other safety team members about what was going on? Why was there not a 911 call as soon as they saw an SUV doing donuts in the church parking lot, or when the first shots fired at the church were thought to be something mechanical? These are things that we train safety teams across the country. Your first line of defense is having a member in the parking lot for situations like this.
 
In our training, “What If”, we talk about an incident that happened on a Sunday at our church where a vehicle came on our property and it looked like the driver was training for the Grand Prix. I was working as “R1” (Rover 1) that day, which encompasses the outside parameters of the church, when I heard tires squealing and looked up to see a vehicle enter the church’s property and slide through a turn in the parking lot. When the vehicle got to the next intersection, it turned toward the entrance of the church, which caused me to believe that the vehicle was planning on driving through the church. I got on my radio to advise the safety team when the vehicle did a Tokyo Drift around the circle in front of the church’s doors and headed back out to the parking lot where it continued to drive erratically until local law enforcement stopped the vehicle. After the vehicle stopped, one of our church members bounced out of the vehicle and said she was having a great day, listening to music, and did not do anything wrong. She did not make it to church that day.
 
The more I researched the CrossPointe incident, it came to me that this had nothing to do with safety training but instead had to do with God’s plan for Deacon Pryor on June 22, 2025. If Deacon Pryor had not been running late because he "was making himself a 'sammich'", nobody would have seen a SUV driving recklessly on church property. If Deacon Pryor had not pulled up to talk to the driver, the suspect might have been able to shoot his way into the church, and the end of the story would be different. God placed Deacon Pryor in a place that He had been training him for all his life. When he saw the weapon and all the gear, he didn’t think about his safety or how he was about to do something unthinkable like running over a person. He didn’t think about what his insurance was going to say when he reported the damage to his truck, which he said was an interesting call (you think?). God whispered in Pryor’s ear, “drive”, and he put his vehicle in gear and ran over the suspected shooter.
 
I listened to an interview with Deacon Pryor. When asked if he realized the seriousness of the situation, Pryor said, “I knew, but I didn’t”. After the incident was over, the clarity of the situation started to set in. In the back of his mind, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. A man in front of him got out of his vehicle, dressed in fatigues, tactical vest, weapon on his hip, pulled out a rifle, and put on ear protection, getting ready to go inside a church and do the unthinkable. Pryor even said it was “so not real”. In the back of his mind, he knew there were generations of families in that church that needed protection, and he responded to the call. After hitting the shooter the first time, the shooter shot Pryor’s truck, causing Pryor to try and run over the shooter again, but the shooter’s bullets had disabled the vehicle. Yet, because of his actions, the shooter, injured from being hit, was found on the ground shooting at the front of the church, making it easier for the safety team to confront and eliminate the threat.
 
During the interview, Pryor let it slip out of a past incident that had happened years ago where a friend of his had died and he questioned why God had let him live. Yet on June 22, 2025, evil came to CrossPointe Community Church and met Deacon Richard Pryor, a humble man who has served his community for years, and that day, he got the clarification he needed that God did have a plan for him.

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