76 year old church volunteer was explaining the church’s suicide hotline with six people, including a tourist group from Canada. “We were talking actually about the suicide prevention hotline that we have here at our church and telling them it’s open 24 hours, seven days a week, and then just then, I heard this pop”.

Meanwhile, an 84 year old church volunteer welcomes this man that hands her a note and his driver’s license. The note stated his pick-up was in the parking lot. He walked up to a gold cross and knelt as if to pray and shot himself. What did the pastor have to say?

“He did not give any sign that he was going to do that. He just came, like any other tourist, to pray,” said pastor Juan Carlos Ortiz. “I think God will have mercy on him, because he must have been very desperate to do what he did.” 

The Orange County coroner’s office identified the man as Steve Smick, 48.  

“I think God will have mercy on him”? Seriously? To make a statement like that for his family to read is just callous, but what else do you expect from some “Christians”. I just can’t help but wonder, going to the house of God, wouldn’t something happen from God Himself to let others know that His house was going to be used for that?

The Crystal Cathedral had been a witness to another tragedy: