Montco man charged in church-service killing
Mark T. Storms was seated with his wife and son at the Keystone Fellowship Church in Montgomery Township on Sunday morning when he saw another member of the congregation causing a commotion.
Mark T. Storms was seated with his wife and son at the Keystone Fellowship Church in Montgomery Township on Sunday morning when he saw another member of the congregation causing a commotion.
Storms approached the man, police said, asked him to step outside, and flashed a badge indicating he had a license to carry a concealed gun.
He then pulled out his semiautomatic pistol and, police said, fired two deadly shots at Robert Braxton.
"We're talking about a church where there's 250 to 300 people attending, and shots are being fired in a crowded area," Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele said Thursday as he announced charges against Storms. "It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me to bring a gun to church."
Storms, 46, of Lansdale, was arrested and charged Thursday with voluntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment in the death of Braxton, 27, of North Wales. The maximum sentence on the manslaughter charge would be 10 to 20 years in prison.
Storms' arrest came after four days of investigation, Steele said, based on interviews with more than 50 witnesses who were inside the church.
Steele gave he following account:
Braxton, a member of the church, was sitting in a back overflow area when another congregant tapped him on the shoulder and told him he had taken an already-occupied seat.
Ushers and others chose to clear the area and let Braxton cool down. But Storms, who is a church member but has no official role at Keystone Fellowship, approached him.
Storms asked Braxton to step outside with him, and Braxton punched him in the face.
Storms told police he was "trying to stop him because I was afraid he was going to hurt me and other people," according to an arrest affidavit filed in the case.
But firing a gun in a crowded church is "unreasonable," Steele said Thursday, as is the suggestion that Storms acted in self-defense.
"This is a situation where a gun is introduced into a fistfight," he said.
The arrest affidavit filed in the case noted that Braxton came to church "only armed with his Bible."
Steele added that the badge Storms carried with his Ruger 9mm handgun might have made people think wrongly that he had an official role in law enforcement or with the church. He said Storms had never held a job as a police officer, and the badge was purchased on the Internet.
Keystone Fellowship members gathered in prayer at the church's Skippack campus Monday night.
"My heart is deeply burdened for the two families whose lives were changed in an instant, and for our church family individually and collectively as we grapple with the shock and pain of it all," Pastor John Cope wrote in a letter to church members this week.
A private funeral for Braxton is scheduled for Saturday, Steele said.
Storms was arraigned Thursday afternoon and ordered held on $250,000 bail at the county prison.
District Judge Andrea Duffy told Storms that he may not possess or acquire firearms if he posts bail. Hunched over in a courtroom chair, wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans, Storms said he did not own any guns other than the one confiscated by police.
"The only one I had," he told the judge, "was the one I used."
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