On Saturday, pastor Tim Remington put his arm around Ted Cruz and then delivered a rousing invocation at a campaign rally in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
Now Remington is on the receiving end of prayers after being shot in the skull and back after his Sunday sermon.
Early Monday morning, authorities identified a suspect in the unholy shooting: a 30-year-old local man and former Marine named Kyle Andrew Odom.
As authorities launched a manhunt for Odom, questions remained over a possible motive, particularly whether the shooting was in any way related to Remington’s appearance with Cruz roughly 24 hours earlier.
“Odom should be considered to be armed and dangerous,” Coeur d’Alene Police said in a statement posted to Facebook.
Some members of Remington’s Altar Church speculated that the shooting might have stemmed from the pastor’s efforts to help drug addicts.
Remington’s supporters, meanwhile, called his survival nothing short of a “miracle.”
“One of the bullets TRIED to enter the brain but stopped at the skull,” Roger Crigger, a family friend wrote on Facebook. “Emergency room [technicians] and [doctors] are calling this a miracle, I’m saying, by today’s worldly standards it IS a miracle.”
The strange shooting came on the heels of a rare campaign rally in the city of 46,000, tucked into the northwestern corner of Idaho about 75 miles from the Canadian border.
This weekend should have been an uplifting moment for Remington, 55. Instead, it soon turned hellish.
Originally from Riverside, Calif., Remington was not your typical Evangelical preacher. Pastor Tim, as he liked to be called, and his wife, Cindy, used to run a coffee house in San Bernardino.
“It was there they became interested in street ministry and the people that are typically ignored; those who have problems with drugs, alcohol, and perversion,” according to Altar Church’s website. “The street ministry days, from San Bernardino to L.A., taught Tim more about drugs and alcohol than all the education he ever had.”
On Saturday, that good work appeared to be rewarded when Remington gave the invocation at Cruz’s Coeur d’Alene rally. The pastor and the presidential candidate also locked arms and prayed, eyes closed and heads bowed, before Cruz delivered a fiery speech denouncing radical Islam and Donald Trump to around 3,000 supporters, according to the Spokesman-Review.
A day later, Remington was walking to his car after delivering a Sunday sermon when he was ambushed.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/idaho-pastor-shot-in-the-skull-after-praying-with-ted-cruz-manhunt-underway-for-former-marine/ar-BBqqKhy?li=BBnbfcL
