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A Michigan church deacon who had a hand in thwarting a rifle-wielding man’s attempts to shoot worshippers at a service in June by ramming the attacker with his truck says he sprang into action because waiting for first responders’ help was not feasible.
“I’m just realizing there’s no time,” Richard Pryor – who drew gunfire while protecting the congregation of CrossPointe Community church in Wayne, Michigan – said during a recent Associated Press interview in which he revisited his state of mind that day. “I didn’t have a weapon on me, in the truck or anything, so what are your options?”
Pryor detailed his thinking from the day his church and its members probably came close to being shot up as many across Wayne and beyond have lavished him with praise, exalting his courage as well as calling him a hero. He has not been entirely comfortable with the spotlight the US media has since shined on him.
“It’s more than I anticipated – that’s for sure,” Pryor told the Michigan news station WXYZ while appearing at a local car dealership which leased him a new truck free of charge to replace the one he damaged when his church was targeted for violence on 22 June. “Hopefully, I can go back into hiding after this … We’ll see.”
Nonetheless, what Pryor has been willing to share about his experience on the day he intervened on behalf of his fellow worshippers makes clear the role he had in ensuring – as he put it – “the attacker’s intended tragedy did not occur”.
Investigators believe 31-year-old Brian Anthony Browning was grappling with a mental health crisis when he equipped himself with a tactical vest, a handgun and a rifle and drove to CrossPointe, about 25 miles (40 km) west of Detroit. Pryor said he was running late and ended up watching as the man later identified as Browning drove dangerously in the church parking lot, stepped out of his car and began firing, wounding one person in the leg.
The deacon called law enforcement on his cellphone and began relaying the scene to an emergency operator when Browning – whom Pryor did not know – kept advancing toward the church doors. Pryor at that point decided to aim his 2018 Ford F-150 pickup at Browning and ram him.
Pryor struck him with his F-150, despite taking multiple shots to his vehicle, officials said. That action temporarily stopped the shooter.
At least two members of an armed security team that CrossPointe launched in response to violence at other places of worship soon approached. The security staffers then fatally shot Browning, whose mother was a CrossPointe congregant but was not there that Sunday.
More than 100 congregants were inside the church, where children attending Bible school led that day’s service. After a security team member came in and directed everyone in the church to get out, a livestream video of the service recorded congregants carrying children away – or pleading with them to take cover or retreat.
Pryor, reflecting on the distressing sequence of events, said he took a measure of comfort in the fact that evidently “a lot of people did not see what happened and weren’t [immediately] aware of what was going on”.
“Trauma is trauma, but thankfully ours is not trauma over loss of life,” Pryor told the AP.
CrossPointe’s pastor, Bobby Kelly, attributed that reality to Pryor, saying: “He hit this individual … and that certainly helped the team to be able to respond.”
All of which motivated the owner of Wayne’s Jack Demmer Ford dealership to give Pryor a free, two-year lease valued at $70,000 for a 2025 F-150 to replace the truck that was hit by multiple bullets as the deacon defended his church.
The dealership owner, Matthew Demmer, said Pryor’s new truck was “the best way to give back”, a token of recognition for how “it could have been a heck of a lot worse”.
As Pryor was handed the key fob to the new truck on 10 July, he declared himself “very grateful – very thankful”. Yet Demmer told WXYZ that Pryor privately maintained in an almost “standoffish” way that he didn’t deserve the truck.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
English (US) ·