This is Pastor Tim’s article which appeared in the Evening Leader on Nov 29, 2021
I am writing this article on Monday, Nov 22. The reason this is important is because I want to write about the tragedy at the Christmas parade in Waukesha, WI. I am writing this article based on what I know today. By the time you read it, much more information will have come out.
The town of Waukesha has a tradition to hold a Christmas parade, which is always on the Sunday afternoon before Thanksgiving. Parades are a tradition in many medium sized towns. We here in St Marys are no exception. I love parades, and it is a great moment for a community to bond together. During the parade, a red SUV ran right through the middle of the parade at a high rate of speed. The particular clip I saw showed a horrible moment of bodies bouncing off of the SUV as it flew right up the parade route. 5 people are dead and dozens are injured.
There is currently a person of interest in custody and as of the writing of this article, every news agency except CNN is reporting the name of that person. I will not write his name in this article. I am sure by now, his name is well known. I pray that God has mercy on his soul. That is the extent of grace this man will get from me.
There are reports that he was running from the scene of a crime. I struggle with that interpretation in that no one was chasing him. There were no police cars in pursuit either in their own cars or on foot. If he was fleeing the scene of the crime, who was he fleeing? And why on earth did he have to flee down the middle of a parade route? And why didn’t he blow his horn? Give those poor children the chance to get out of the way. Just to be clear, he was fleeing without being chased, and he made no attempt to get anyone out of his way.
Even though CNN has reported this was not the case, one of the parallels everyone wants to draw is that there is no tie to the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, which took place less than one hour from Waukesha. How CNN can know that without even knowing who they had in custody is bewildering to me. I have no information that this was an act of terror, but from what I am hearing reported, I don’t believe there is any ground to rule it out at this point either.
But let me be very clear. I could not possibly care less about the driver of the SUV’s politics, race, lifestyle or anything else about him. What I care about is that he was driving down the middle of a Christmas parade and hurting and killing innocent men, women and children. What his reason was for hurting all of those people makes no difference to me. There are going to be families around Waukesha who are never going to sit down to a Thanksgiving meal together ever again because of what this man did.
Over the days and weeks to come, there will be plenty of information coming out about reasons and explanations. But let me tell you what you will not hear. You will not hear an excuse because there isn’t one. As I already said, I pray for God’s mercy for this man, and I am perfectly happy to put him in God’s hands for He deals in far more grace and mercy than I do. That being said, there is no scenario where the public should ever be exposed to this man ever again.
Every effort will be made to politicize this situation and make it about the greater good/evil or whatever. Don’t allow that to enter your mind. This situation was about the actions of a man that resulted in innocent lives being shattered. There is no room for politics here.
The real lesson here is that we all need to hug the people we love today. Life is precious and fragile.