By Allison Gordon, Yahya Abou-Ghazala, Casey Tolan, Zoe Sottile

(CNN) — Thomas Jacob Sanford was known around his small Michigan suburb for his distinctive pickup truck, which he often drove with two American flags flying from the bed behind him.

In recent weeks, locals said, Sanford began behaving oddly – nearly running over a longtime friend with his truck in a seeming joke, asking a local political candidate questions about his positions on guns and then openly declaring his hatred for the LDS church, even saying that “Mormons are the Antichrist.”

Then, on Sunday morning, as neighbors took in the first reports of a mass shooting at a nearby LDS church, they saw the photos: Sanford’s GMC Sierra truck, rammed into the front of the burning building.

Police say Sanford, 40, crashed his truck into the front of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc before shooting at congregants with an assault rifle and setting the building on fire. At least four people were killed and eight injured. Sanford died during an exchange of gunfire with police, authorities said.

Sanford’s friends and acquaintances are now trying to piece together how he went from a Marine veteran raising a child with a rare genetic disorder to the suspect in the country’s latest deadly rampage.

Local authorities have not identified a motive in the attack. But White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Monday that Sanford was “an individual who hated people of the Mormon faith.”

Kris Johns, a city council candidate in Sanford’s town of Burton, Michigan, told CNN he met Sanford on the campaign trail about a week before the attack.

A few minutes into what had been a friendly conversation, Johns said, Sanford asked him, “What do you think about guns?” and “What do you know about Mormons?” Sanford went on to voice negative views about the LDS Church, Johns said, asking “increasingly pointed and sharper questions” about Mormon theology and history and ultimately launching into inflammatory language about his hatred of the church.

Johns said he was shocked and surprised by the intensity of Sanford’s tirade, but that Sanford didn’t voice any threats over their 15-to-20 minute discussion, or give Johns any sign that he would turn to violence.

Of the thousands of people Johns has met while door-knocking on the campaign trail, he said, “the vast majority of conversations are polite and genteel. This one was not.”

Sanford also told Johns that he had suffered drug addiction in the past, and that he had previously lived in Utah, Johns said.

Kara Pattison, a longtime friend of Sanford’s who spoke to CNN affiliate WDIV Local 4, remembered him as a “fun-loving family guy,” but also said he “harbored unkind feelings toward certain groups” and “definitely talked about groups of people in ways that weren’t acceptable.”

“How do you mourn the death of someone who did something so terrible?” she asked.

Jason Allen, a Burton resident, told CNN that even locals who didn’t personally know Sanford recognized his truck.

With flags flying from the back as Sanford drove it through town, “you couldn’t miss the truck,” Allen said. Sometimes, he said, Sanford would “switch one of his flags out for a ‘F*** Biden’ flag.”

Sanford, who went by “Jake,” was an Iraq War veteran and outdoorsman, according to military records and social media posts. He grew up in the Flint area and had lived for years in the suburb of Burton, public records show.

Pattison told WDIV that just two days before the attack, Sanford sped his truck at her and her sixteen-year-old daughter as they were crossing a street on foot, forcing them to jump back.

“Then the window rolled down, and it was Jake,” Pattison said. “He was laughing. He’s, like, ‘Oh, got you guys.’” That kind of joke “wasn’t normal behavior” for him, she said.

Sanford is registered to vote, but Michigan does not have partisan voter registration. A Google Street View photo from June 2025 shows a “Trump Vance” campaign sign on his home’s fence, and a social media photo from 2019 showed Sanford wearing a Trump shirt.

A Marine Corps spokesperson told CNN Sanford served as a sergeant and received several medals for his service, which lasted from 2004 to 2008. He was deployed during Operation Iraqi Freedom for several months starting in the summer of 2007.

Sanford graduated from Goodrich High School in 2004 and was recognized among other veteran alumni, according to an archived page from the school’s website. A local news profile of Sanford from 2007 said he was deployed with the US Marine Corp to Japan before preparing to head for service in Iraq.

Social media accounts linked to Sanford’s family show that he was married with at least one child, a young son. On a GoFundMe page from 2015, the family asked for donations to help pay for the medical care of Sanford’s son, who was born with a rare genetic disorder.

The newborn baby was diagnosed with a condition called Congenital Hyperinsulinism, which required a lengthy hospital stay and several surgeries to remove portions of the pancreas, according to a family Facebook page documenting the difficult journey.

The child’s medical condition took a financial toll on the family, with one local news article reporting that Sanford took leave from his work as a truck driver for Coca-Cola to be with his son.

“Don’t ever take having healthy kids for granted,” Sanford is quoted as saying in another article. “We are proud of our child. I spent four years in the Marine Corps and was in Iraq and this is still the most unique thing to deal with.”

Other posts on Sanford’s mother’s Facebook page show that Sanford was a hunter, posing with deer and other game.

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