A day after he delivered the invocation at a campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, 55-year-old Tim Remington, the senior pastor of the nondenominational Altar Church in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, was shot several times.
NBC News reported that the incident happened on Sunday around 5 p.m. ET. Remington was taken to Kootenai Health and Medical Center in critical condition, according to Police Chief Lee White. He was reported to be in stable condition late Sunday night by the hospital.
The Daily Mail reports that Remington was shot in front of the church six times, including in the head, lung, hip and shoulder.
The pastor’s nephew, Matthew Remington, told KTVB that he was conscious after getting shot and was able to talk to emergency workers while being transported to the hospital.
The gunman, who has been identified as 30-year-old Kyle Andrew Odom, who has blond hair and blue eyes, is believed to have been driving a 2004 silver Honda Accord, according to police. They warned that he should be considered armed and dangerous.
John Padula, the associate pastor at Remington’s church, said that surveillance footage shows the gunman waiting in a silver car before the shooting. He adds that as Remington opened his car door, the shooter “just started shooting him in the back.”
“It didn’t look like the first time he had shot,” Padua told The Spokesman-Review. “He stood pretty professional as he was shooting,” he added, noting that Remington was doing “absolutely fine” in the hospital and had miraculously escaped any life-threatening injuries.
“We don’t love him less than anybody else,” Padula said of the gunman, noting that the church was praying for him as well as their pastor. “And we pray that he comes to know Jesus Christ as his lord and savior, so we don’t want to see anything bad happen to him, either,” he added.
At a rally on Saturday at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds, Remington, who is reported to be a prominent spokesman for conservative issues, delivered the opening prayer for the senator from Texas, Cruz.
“Our prayers are with Pastor Tim, his family, and the doctors who are supervising his care,” Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for Cruz’s campaign, told NBC News. “We pray for his full recovery and are thankful for the efforts of law enforcement to ensure the attacker is swiftly brought to justice.”
While Padula claims that Remington has received threats over the years from addicts he has tried to help, police have yet to establish a motive for the shooting.
Remington has been known to invite recovering addicts to live with him and his family in the past in his position of director of the faith-based Good Samaritan Rehabilitation drug and alcohol residential program, according to reports.
“When I was struggling, when I was using drugs still, he just loved the daylights out of me and helped me, as he has done for the 1,700 people now who have graduated our program,” said Padula. “He is the most selfless man I have ever met in my life,” he added.
Remington returned home to Coeur d’Alene about 18 years ago after spending time as a pastor of a church in California during the 1980s, according to his biography on The Altar Church website.
The native of northern Idaho continued the good work he had started in California, when he started a street ministry for drug and alcohol addicts, by setting up the Good Samaritan Rehabilitation program on his return to Coeur d’Alene. Remington and his wife, Cindy, have four children.
