Parishioners at Louisiana church stop possible mass shooting

Congregants at a Louisiana church banded together to prevent a mass shooting over the weekend, and it was all caught on a livestream.

The chaos erupted Saturday at Saint Mary Magdalene Church in Abbeville during a first communion ceremony for 60 second graders. According to police, a 16-year-old boy carrying a gun opened the back door of the packed church and was immediately confronted and escorted away by parishioners.

Panic can be seen sweeping over the crowd in the ceremony’s livestream. Altar servers ran for cover and clergy ducked behind the altar, all while the priest tried to calm everyone by asking them to recite a prayer.

Officers in tactical gear showed up moments later to make sure the church was safe. Nobody was hurt, and the 16-year-old was arrested and taken for a mental health evaluation.

The Louisiana incident came a week after a man attempted to shoot a Pennsylvania pastor mid-service. Video of that would-be shooting showed the moment the man’s gun jammed as the deacon dove over a pew and tackled him.

“I just tried to get out the way of him shooting me, because he pointed it right at me, and I’m just looking right down the barrel of a gun,” pastor Glenn Germany told CBS News.

The Pennsylvania gunman, Bernard Polite, said he heard voices. He was arrested and charged with murdering his cousin earlier that day.

Omar Villafranca

Omar Villafranca is a CBS News correspondent based in Dallas. He joined CBS News in 2014 as a correspondent for Newspath. Before CBS, Villafranca worked at KXAS-TV Dallas-Fort Worth, at KOTV-TV the CBS affiliate in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and at KSWO-TV in Lawton, Oklahoma.