Relatives struggle for answers after shooting

updated 9:33 a.m. ET March 14, 2005

BROOKFIELD, Wis. - It was just another weekend service for churchgoers in this Milwaukee suburb when, without warning, they began to be gunned down by one of their own.

Now victims’ relatives are struggling to keep their faith and find answers.

“This is a totally senseless thing,” said Jeff Miller, whose 44-year-old brother, Gerald, died shielding an elderly woman who survived. “He was a great guy. He didn’t deserve to die.”

Terry Ratzmann, a buttoned-down churchgoer known for sharing his homegrown vegetables with neighbors, walked into the room and police said he shot 22 bullets from a 9 mm handgun within a minute.

'He was average Joe'
None of those who knew him expected Ratzmann to be violent. Neighbors said he was quiet and devout, that he liked to tinker about his house and garden. He would even release the chipmunks caught in traps he set in his yard.

But Saturday, the Sabbath for the Living Church of God, Ratzmann turned on worshippers.

“He wasn’t a dark guy. He was average Joe,” said Shane Colwell, a neighbor who knew Ratzmann for about a decade. “It’s not like he ever pushed his beliefs on anyone else.”

The 44-year-old computer technician lived with his mother and sister in a modest home about two miles from the suburban Milwaukee hotel where police say he opened fire during service.

Focus on 'end times'
The Charlotte, N.C.-based Living Church of God is a denomination that grew out of a schism in the Worldwide Church of God, formed in 1933, and focuses on “end-time” prophecies.

This year, the group’s leader, Dr. Roderick C. Meredith, wrote that events prophesied in the Bible are “beginning to occur with increasing frequency.” The church has an estimated 6,300 members in 40 countries.

Ratzmann himself regularly attended the gatherings at the Sheraton hotel — the Milwaukee-area church group did not have a building of its own. But member Chandra Frazier said he walked out of a recent sermon “sort of in a huff.”

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