GRAND BLANC, Michigan — The victims in Sunday’s horrifying attack at a Michigan Mormon church that left four congregants dead and eight wounded include a beloved father and husband, a Navy veteran grandfather and a kindergarten dancer and her parents.
Many of the victims’ loved ones have set up GoFundMe pages to raise funds for final expenses, hospital bills and to help put the shattered pieces of their lives together after the monstrous assault on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc.
John Bond, 77, was fatally shot by US Marine vet Thomas Sanford after the gunman rammed his truck into the church and opened fire. Bond, a US Navy veteran, was “a lover of golf and trains and always loved spending time with his family and grandkids,” his family said.
Craig Hayden, 78, the oldest casualty of the shooting, was a husband, father and father-in-law who died helping another victim of the attack, according to a family statement.
“My in-laws are those people in your neighborhood that have spent their entire lives serving God and the community. Expecting nothing more than their reward in heaven,” wrote Terry Green, Hayden’s son-in-law and owner of Billmeier Camera Shop in Fenton, Michigan.
The family has raised over $25,000 so far to “help support his wife of over 50 years get through the bills and living expenses she will now be facing alone.”
Green said he’s been flooded with messages from friends and other well-wishers, whom he urged to hug their own families, because “tomorrow is never promised.”
Little Piper Hickens, a dancer and kindergartner who at just six years old was the youngest victim of the shooting, was wounded along with her parents, Brandi and Jared, according to a statement on the family’s GoFundMe page, which has raised $3,800 so far.
The family has been treated and released, and Piper was playing in the backyard when The Post stopped by Tuesday afternoon.
A neighbor, Hilary Brox, who was watching the house while Brandi and Jared visited other victims at Henry Ford Genesys Hospital said the young girl was struck in the back but the bullet was never found.
“There have been lots of little miracles throughout this,” Brox said, noting that although going through such a terrible event “shatters your sense of safety,” her faith wound up stronger than ever after the ordeal.
Authorities said all congregants present at the Sept. 28 shooting and fire have been accounted for, and that all victims have been identified.
Neither Grand Blanc Police Chief William Renye nor Henry Ford Genesys Hospital — where eight of the attack victims were hospitalized — returned The Post’s request for comment.
