Hundreds of Bishops & Episcopalians March, Calling for an End to Gun Violence

According to news reports, 48-year-old Timothy Reynolds was shot and killed after an altercation with two young men who were washing drivers’ windshields at an intersection near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, about two blocks from the Baltimore Convention Center where the 80th General Convention is taking place July 8-11. After words were exchanged, Reynolds got out of his car and swung a baseball bat in the direction of those who sometimes are called “squeegee workers,” one of whom shot Reynolds. He later was pronounced dead at a local hospital.

When marchers, who had been joined by local journalists, some onlookers and curious tourists, reached an area deemed large enough to accommodate the crowd, Perry noted the march was taking place “to remember all the victims – those where were attacked by a baseball bat, and for the folks who shot a person who died, for the structures of poverty and racism that cause things like this to happen, but mostly because of the ready, accessible nature of guns in our country.”

Bishop Susan Haynes of Southern Virginia, who happened upon the scene of yesterday’s murder, reads a passage from Isaiah. 

Bishop Susan Haynes of the Diocese of Southern Virginia told Episcopal News Service that she was walking back to her hotel yesterday afternoon when she saw first responders approaching a nearby intersection. She then noticed a body lying in the street and paramedics beginning to administer CPR, later placing the man into an ambulance. “I just felt the need to stay there and pray, because there was nothing else I could do,” she said. “I had a sense that this man was dying, and he needed to have prayer as he died.” Then, she said she “spoke a word of encouragement to the police officers and thanked them for their work.”