Church shooting survivor: ‘I thought I was dying’

Joe Barnhart thought he was dying after a gunman opened fire on him, the people closest to him, and his fellow church congregants in Knoxville, Tenn., last Sunday.

But as he lay bleeding on the floor of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, Barnhart’s first thought was of what would happen to his grandchildren.

“I thought that I had been hit in my back with a shotgun and I was dying,” Barnhart told TODAY co-host Matt Lauer from his hospital bed on Wednesday.

As he lay wounded, Barnhart knew that his friend Linda Kraeger, who had come to Tennessee to help him and his wife, Maryann, raise their grandchildren, would not be able to do that because she was already dying or dead. “So my brother Jim will help with that,” he recalled thinking. “And of course, our daughter had just come from Texas and so the children would be taken care of. So that’s what flashed through my mind.”

A 58-year-old unemployed engineer is accused in Sunday morning’s attack during a children’s production of the musical “Annie” in the church. Police say a letter found in Jim D. Adkisson’s car showed that he was spurred to his shooting spree in part by his “stated hated for the liberal movement.”

Barnhart, 76, was one of the nine victims in the shooting. His long-time friend and researcher Linda Kraeger was killed. His daughter, brother and sister-in-law were also among the injured.

Now the retired University of North Texas religion and philosophy professor is trying to make sense of the senseless.

“This killing was wholly impersonal,” he told Lauer.

A family’s anguish
Barnhart and his family were at the church to watch his granddaughter Tori perform in the play, which was put on by children from the Sequoyah Hills Church and the Westside Unitarian Universalist Church.

At about 10 a.m., according to police, Adkisson walked into the church, pulled a 12-gauge shotgun from a guitar case, and fired three rounds.

Barnhart said it was obvious Adkisson was taking aim at his row.

“Our 14-year-old [granddaughter], I think she had been on stage and I think she witnessed all of this,” Barnhart told Lauer.

Barnhart recalls that Kraeger, who had been Barnhart’s researcher for more than 40 years and followed his move from Texas to Tennessee, “fell down on her face in blood.”

Video   Gunman kills 2 in Tenn. church July 28: 2 people are dead and 7 injured after a gunman opened fire at a Tennessee church. Today show

As he bent down to assist her, Barnhart was shot in the back of the neck and in the left shoulder. His daughter, Linda Chavez, was shot in the hands while trying to protect her face from the gunfire. She remains in critical condition and, according to Barnhart, is at risk of losing vision in one of her eyes.

Barnhart's brother Jack Barnhart, 69, has been upgraded from critical to serious condition, while his sister-in-law Betty Barnhart has already been discharged from the hospital. Joe Barnhart himself is expected to make a full recovery.

“Luckily, my wife was not hit,” Barnhart added. “She’s in good shape.”

Reflections on hate
Investigators described Adkisson as a former member of an Army airborne unit who trained as a mechanical engineer, but had been out of work since 2006.

In a four-page letter found in his SUV, Adkisson expressed his belief that the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was a haven for liberalism in the typically socially conservative

J. Miles Cary / Knoxville News Sentinel / Polaris Shooting suspect Jim D. Adkisson is taken away by police.

area of Eastern Tennessee.

A former teacher of ethics and social tolerance, Barnhart identified Adkisson as a textbook sociopath.

“There’s a psychiatrist up in Harvard who wrote ‘The Sociopath Next Door,’ ” Barnhart said, referring to a 2005 book by Martha Stout. “And I think she describes a sociopath rather clearly. They can appear nice and pleasant on the surface, but basically they think of other people as objects — as things, not persons.

“[Adkisson] did not know Linda Kraeger, a good, decent human being — an author, a caretaker, a good wife for her husband,” Barnhart went on. “He didn’t know me. He didn’t know my brothers, my daughter.

“He just picked a row out and shot down the row.”

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