The Kansas CW | Eyewitness To Tiller Shooting Talks About What Happened
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By Jim Grawe (WICHITA, Kan.)
"It was chaos--just mass chaos." Those are the words from a man who was there when Dr. George Tiller was murdered in the lobby of Wichita's Reformation Lutheran Chruch.
"It caught us all off guard," Gary says. "Our guard was completely down that day."
Gary doesn't want us to use his last name or show his face, but he is willing to share some of what he saw and did as deadly violence erupted in his place of worship.
"I'm not going to tell the whole story right now but it'll come out in court." Gary will tell us that he was ushering with Dr. Tiller on Sunday. Both were in the lobby just minutes after the service started, so were a few others including one visitor with a gun.
"I tried to second guess myself and say if we would have done this or if we would have done that."
But Gary says he realizes he did all he could. Without explaining the details of what he witnessed, Gary says he chased the gunman who verbally threatened him outside the door.
"I did make it out to my truck, called 911 and we got a tag number." Gary's description led to the arrest of Scott Roeder a few hours later.
He says Roeder had visited Reformation Lutheran a few times in recent weeks, keeping to himself.
Gary says Roeder left an incoherant note in the collection plate once, but didn't seem particularly dangerous.
"I think he was just waiting for the moment." It was a moment everyone has heard about, but this man witnessed first hand and still finds hard to believe.
