Around 4:30 a.m. on Dec. 19, police in Maple Ridge, B.C., found the body of 33-year-old Peter Bender shot dead in a car in the parking lot of Haney
Presbyterian Church.
Bender was a member of St. Luke’s Roman Catholic Church and wasn’t known to the congregation at Haney. But having such a tragedy occur on church property was a shock, said Rev. Dr. Gerard Booy, lead minister at the Presbyterian church.
“The sadness of it. It got us,” he said. “He wasn’t known to our people. There wasn’t a sense of personal loss; more of a sadness that those types of things happen in our community, and even happen on our church property.”
Family and friends of Bender have set up a small memorial in the church parking lot. The youth group from St. Luke’s has also held a prayer vigil there.
Booy attended the funeral mass for Bender on Jan. 8. “It was very, very moving,” he said.
Bender was a husband and the father of two children, both under five years old.
The police investigation into the shooting is ongoing and few details have been released.
