The two evangelical churches have been involved in a religious dispute for four years and it finally culminated in a huge gunfight yesterday lasting over five hours and involving thirty officers from the Californian town’s police department.
Residents of the El Encanto area said they saw flashes of muzzles going off and priests in their outfits running and shooting wildly at each other.
“In the name of Jesus, can’t these people stop the shooting for a few minutes already? I need to get to work,” Al Gomez, a janitor at the local High School told local news.
Half way through the shooting, police cars arrived at the scene and tried to stop the two church factions but were instead embroiled in even more gunplay.
Officer Bill Jenkem told WKRTC news: “We eventually stopped the shooting when someone got a model of the Virgin Mary and started walking with it around the church. The priests put their automatic weapons down and started praying to the statue.”
American churches are heavily armed places with one church in Texas even having a 50 calibre anti-aircraft gun emplacement in the car park.
