Minister, wife of man killed at church in Fort Worth suburb reflect on shooting
Glenda White and her husband Richard almost went on a weekend camping trip that would have kept them away from church, but rain prompted them to stay home.
Then Glenda overslept that Sunday morning and suggested they just stay in bed. They decided to go to church instead.
If they had stayed home, Richard White, 67, would still be alive. But many others might be dead.
In an interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Thursday, Glenda White described the caring nature of her husband and his sacrifice for his church family at West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement. On Dec. 29, a gunman in the church shot Richard White and Tony Wallace before Jack Wilson, a member of the security team, shot and killed him.
Richard White was shot first as he reached for his gun. He drew fire away from everyone else and allowed Wilson to get into position to shoot, his wife said.
“He was where God wanted him to be. And I firmly, firmly believe that,” Glenda White said.
On Wednesday, West Freeway Church of Christ senior minister Britt Farmer also met with the Star-Telegram to talk about how church members are trying to move on while honoring those they lost.
“It’s been a very difficult walk for the past week,” Farmer said. “The only way we’re going to overcome it is to bring people to an understanding that we’re not going to let evil win.”
Richard and Glenda White met eight years ago at the church on Las Vegas Trail. Glenda introduced herself to Richard’s parents and was struck by Richard’s kind nature. In August that year, they got married in the church where they met.
They camped and went on cruises, and Richard — who retired as a sales manager for a manufacturing company — loved to hunt and golf.
“I just miss — I miss the phone calls, I miss everything,” Glenda White said. “It’s like my right arm was taken away.”
The Whites spent a lot of their time with another couple: Farmer and his wife, Lisa.
Richard White and Farmer became immediate friends when Farmer joined the church in 2011. White did not put Farmer on a pedestal like some people do with ministers — he saw him as “just Britt.” The two went on seven cruises together with their wives.
Farmer relives the morning he lost two of his best friends every day, every hour, every minute, he said.
He describes the two minutes they waited for police to get to the church as feeling like hours. He remembers that he looked at his wounded friend Richard and knew he was not going to make it even as others tried to resuscitate him.
The one thing he does not remember, and does not care to, is the shooter’s name, though he had interacted with him several times over the years as the man sought help from the church.
In Farmer’s office at the church, a crammed wooden bookshelf stretches from floor to ceiling against one wall. Photos of his family — his wife, four kids, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild — line the shelf above his desk. Farmer pointed out the poinsettia in the corner of his brightly lit office that had never bloomed; not enough darkness, he mused.
After describing some of the better-faring plants, Farmer, 60, sat with his hands in his lap. He coughed a few times and apologized — cedar fever, he explained. Then, he sat up straight and talked about his faith, leading a traumatized congregation and losing his best friend.
What’s changed, and what has not
In a measured voice, Farmer described how the Sunday after the shooting was among the toughest he has ever had.
“My focus was still sharp enough that it was bitterly real,” he said. “Somebody said it was really raw. And it did not feel raw to me. It felt real and in a bitter way.”
Farmer still gets sudden reminders that his friends are gone. He was supposed to have a meeting with Wallace this past Thursday and play golf with Richard White on Friday.
Farmer knew White was not going to survive as soon as he saw him on the floor. But he pushed the thought away until finally, as he stood in a hallway with two church deacons, he got the call. His friend was dead.
He screamed.
Later, he got another call that Wallace, a 64-year-old church deacon and registered nurse, had died.
“That was the one that really tore me up because I thought that Tony was going to be OK,” Farmer said.
The day after the shooting, a man who appeared homeless walked into the church — the doors’ automatic locks were not working.
Another church member ran to get Farmer and told him someone was inside.
Farmer went to talk to the man, who asked if the church had any food. Farmer gave him a meal, gloves, socks and toiletries.
He said the shooting is not going to stop him, or the church, from helping other people.
“There’s a reason people are in the situation they’re in. One is by choice, the other is by circumstance,” Farmer said. “And if it’s by choice, we want to help people make better choices. And if it’s by circumstance, we want to help get them out of the circumstances they’re in. So anybody that comes here, we’re going to try and help them.”
One passage Farmer has leaned on since the shooting is 1 John 4:17, which says, in part, “... in this world, we are like Him.”
The verse reminds him that “to be like Jesus means in every aspect of our lives.”
The shooting
Glenda White said she has not been able to go back into the church auditorium, and going to church at all for the past few weeks has been difficult.
“It’s almost like you have a paralyzed feeling, and I lay there as long as I can lay there, and then I get up and I go,” she said.
She noticed the strange man wearing an obviously fake beard as soon as he walked into the church on Dec. 29. She was at the south entrance greeting people as they walked in when he pulled open the door and was face to face with her.
He turned and asked her where the chapel was, and she told him he was “heading in the right direction.”
When she was done greeting people, she sat in the pews and saw the man walk out of the service and assumed he had left.
Her husband read Scripture for the service. But instead of walking down the aisle to sit with her, like normal, he walked to the other side of the auditorium. She was confused at the time, but now realizes he was sitting in a chair at the back of the church to keep an eye on the strange man, who had come back into the service.
Just before communion, she said, she heard a strange noise that she thought was her husband’s voice.
She turned and saw the bearded man standing with a gun. She heard one shot and then a second, and yelled for everyone to get down. She and a friend pulled out their guns and ran across the auditorium. She saw Tony Wallace slumped in a chair with blood on his chest — she thought he was the only one who had been shot.
She and others kept their guns on the shooter, who had been shot by security team leader Jack Wilson, until police arrived. A friend walked over and told her she needed to see her husband.
Only then did Glenda White realize Richard White had been shot.
“I just kind of lost it after that, I think,” she said. “I remember climbing over a pew to try and get back there. And as I got back there, I could just see his face, and then police started pushing and getting us out of the auditorium.”
She watched as paramedics performed CPR on her husband and put him in an ambulance. Her friends took her to the hospital, where they waited.
Ten minutes later, someone told her Richard was dead.
“I think even at the hospital they wouldn’t let me go in and see him,” she said. “So that was tough because he was there, and then was not. And I was not able to see him.”
Interactions with the shooter
The shooter was later identified as Keith Kinnunen, 43, from River Oaks.
Farmer had multiple interactions with him before Kinnunen shot Wallace and White. Farmer said they had run-ins over money.
Kinnunen would approach the church doors, at times alone and sometimes with another person, and ask for food and money. Farmer would tell him he would give him food and clothes, but church policy is to not hand out money to people.
Farmer said that made Kinnunen angry.
“He said, ‘There is money in this church. I know you have money, and you’re going to give it to me,’” Farmer said.
The last interaction Farmer had with Kinnunen was in the winter of 2018, when Farmer saw him standing on a corner near the church. Farmer was in his wife’s car and said she, unlike him, keeps change in her center console. He scooped up the coins, which totaled about two dollars, and handed them to Kinnunen.
“And I said, ‘This is all I have, but you can have it,’” he said. “And the light turned and he started yelling, and he said, ‘I don’t want this stinking stuff,’ and he threw it at me. He started screaming and hollering and cussing.”
Farmer said no one may ever know Kinnunen’s motive in the shooting, but he does not think Kinnunen was evil — he said he was someone making an evil decision.
Kinnunen’s family reached out to the church and said they were praying for them, Farmer said, and Kinnunen’s sister said she felt terrible about what happened.
“I would like the world to know that we have not stopped praying for that man’s family,” Farmer said. “I think they’re the ones that are left out. And we need to focus on the ones who were traumatized, but they have trauma too. I mean that man was somebody’s son. Brother. Friend.”
Glenda White said she was angry with Kinnunen at first, but that feeling is gone.
“He was so consumed with hatred, and there is a part of me that my heart breaks for him to be that desperate,” she said. “When he came through that door, his resolve was there. He knew exactly what he was going to do.”
Guns in church
In the hallway leading to Farmer’s office on Wednesday, a woman sat at a wooden desk. Next to her was a TV screen filled with surveillance feeds from about a dozen cameras around the church. To get into the building, except during church service, one must be buzzed inside.
The West Freeway Church of Christ established its security team in December 2017, after Texas passed a law that allows houses of worship to have armed volunteer security teams. Farmer himself did not even have a handgun until that December, but knew many church members carried.
The shooting pushed West Freeway Church of Christ — and Farmer — not just into a national spotlight, but into the nationwide debate on guns.
He said he’s been criticized by strangers who do not think guns belong in a church. While he pointed out that he does not make decisions for the church, he does support the idea of open-carry in places of worship.
“I believe that we should be willing and able to fill the need for protecting each other,” Farmer said.
Farmer cites Jesus’ words from Luke 22 as support for the idea of religion coinciding with bearing arms. In verse 36, Jesus tells his disciples, “And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one.”
“Jesus said, ‘Be prepared, protect yourself if you need to,’ ” Farmer said.
In the wake of the shooting, some called for a look at stricter gun laws in Texas.
Farmer said he does not think the state needs more gun laws, but says instead the country needs more “common sense.”
“I think the breakdown of the family is what we’re seeing, is the problem,” he said.
Living in the aftermath
On Wednesday, Farmer walked through the church and pointed out the gifts they’ve received from people in the community and strangers across the country.
Hundreds of letters and cards are pinned to a bulletin board or stuffed into a basket in the church’s hallway.
A poster from Fort Worth’s Wedgwood Baptist Church, where a gunman killed seven people and wounded seven in 1999, hangs in the entrance hall.
On a desk inside the main entrance, a basket is filled with gray rubber bracelets that a group sent the church. The bracelets say “God is Bigger.”
For the past few Sundays, services have been held in the fellowship area of the church instead of the auditorium.
For psychological and practical reasons, the church is remodeling that room. Farmer does not want people to relive that day, as he does, when they walk in.
In his office, Farmer talked about how much he learned about Wallace at Wallace’s funeral. He told stories about Wallace and Richard White. He described one chaotic afternoon Farmer and White spent chasing two sheep that ended up in the roadway. Farmer brought the sheep to church for vacation Bible school that summer, and they broke out of the pen the church built for them.
He said he was convinced he was going to get in trouble, but Richard White laughed and told him it was going to be all right.
“I can hear him saying it,” Farmer said. “And I think that’s what he would be saying now: ‘It’ll be all right.’”
He paused and turned his head slightly toward his desk, wiping his eyes.
“I miss my friend,” he said.
Glenda White still wonders if her husband knew what was going to happen when he pulled his gun on Kinnunen. And while she said a part of her still cannot believe her husband is gone, she said she would not want to change anything.
If she could go back in time, she would still go to church that Sunday morning.
“That’s where we were supposed to be,” she said. “If we weren’t there, I just can’t even imagine what would have happened.”
The shooting did not shake Farmer’s or Glenda White’s faith, they said — it enhanced it. To those who question why God would allow such a tragedy inside a house of worship, Farmer encourages them to look beyond the evil.
“You got a man defending 244 people,” he said, referring to White. “Yeah, there’s good there. A good man stood up and said, ‘This is my family. You’re not going to do this to them.’ He didn’t do it for the glory. He lost his life.”
Glenda White said the verse that keeps coming back to her is John 15:13; “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
This story was originally published January 19, 2020 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Minister, wife of man killed at church in Fort Worth suburb reflect on shooting."
