MESSAGE BOARDS: Church Shootings GALLERY Shooting Fatalities

September 19, 1999
Web posted at: 6:09 p.m. EDT (2209 GMT)

FORT WORTH, Texas (CNN) -- Young worshipers at Wedgwood Baptist Church's youth rally Wednesday may have fancied themselves at a large rock concert -- given the sanctuary's high ceiling, amphitheater-like design and spotlighted stage.

But an exclusive tour of the church's sanctuary Sunday -- four days after the bloody rampage that took eight lives -- makes one thing clear: none of the estimated 150 people in attendance had a comfortable distance from the shooter.

Only 15 pews separate the front pulpit of the sanctuary from the room's back door.

Even members of the Christian rock group Forty Days, farthest from the gunman as he paced back and forth in the back of the room, were within easy rock-throwing distance from the gunman, let alone gunshot distance.

The church is remarkable for what has been changed, and for what remains the same. Immediately outside the main entrance through which Larry Gene Ashbrook walked Wednesday night is a banner: "Let The Healing Begin."

Scratched on the sidewalk, an inscription: "Jesus is in this Bilding (sic)!"

The main entrance's eight glass doors open to a large room with pale-blue walls. It was here where custodian Jeff Laster, 36, approached Ashbrook about his cigarette, and where Ashbrook pulled a gun, shooting Laster in the abdomen.

Ashbrook then shot choir director Sydney Browning, 36, who was seated on a sofa against the far wall. Browning died, and Laster is still hospitalized.

The room's carpeting has been removed, and the floors are streaked with dried carpet glue. The sofa is also gone, replaced with two chairs, a table and a large vase containing long-stemmed red roses. One bullet hole is visible about thigh level in the wall near where the sofa had been.

Another bullet hole, at head level, scars the wall of the hallway leading to the sanctuary.

Then there's the sanctuary door. It contains a long, narrow window through which Ashbrook fired. The shattered glass has been replaced.

But signs of the killings, and the cleanup, remain in the sanctuary. About 12 rows of pews -- seemingly randomly selected throughout the sanctuary -- have been removed and replaced with rows of folding metal chairs. Numerous bullet holes mar the walls of the sanctuary.

Witnesses say Ashbrook rolled a small pipe bomb down one aisle that exploded in the church during the shooting.

Small pockmarks are on a wall stage left. "Most of this is shrapnel damage," Wedgwood teacher Phil Bradberry said.

"What's shrapnel mean?" his 7-year-old son asked.

Wedgwood spokesman John Porter said he noted a change since an earlier post-shooting visit to the sanctuary.

Someone had removed the little sticky notes that police had used to mark possible evidence. "They were everywhere," Porter said.

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