Michigan church shooting victim died trying to save worshipper, family says

Craig Hayden, 72, was killed as he tried to help another worshipper escape during a shooting at their Michigan church over the weekend, a Hayden family member said Tuesday.

GRAND BLANC TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Craig Hayden, 72, was killed as he tried to help another worshipper escape gunfire during a shooting at their Michigan church over the weekend, a family member said Tuesday.

And one of Hayden’s daughters, who survived Sunday’s shooting at a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc Township, came face to face with the shooter and “stared into his eyes,” she said in a handwritten letter that was posted to a family GoFundMe account started to help her mother.

Hayden’s daughter-in-law, Jennifer Hayden, said her father-in-law “was trying to help somebody else and that person lived.”

“So he gave his life for another,” she said. She did not provide further details about the encounter. “The other hero would be his daughter, who talked the gunman down and distracted him,” she said.

He would have celebrated his birthday next month, she said.