ANNAPOLIS, Md. (WUSA9) — Between every aisle and pew, there was a song and a prayer for each of the five people killed in the Capital Gazette newsroom on Thursday.
“The first thing that went through my mind was, 'oh my God,” said Rev. M. Dion Thompson at Saint Anne’s Episcopal Church.
Rev. Thompson delivered the sermon at special service for the victims on Saturday and remembered getting the news.
“I spent all of Thursday dreading when the names were going to come out,” he said.
The Annapolis church leader was pained after the victim’s names were announced.
Rev Thompson is much more than just a church leader – he is a former journalist.
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“I know Rob Hiaasen. Rob works there, and Wendi works there,” he said.
Rev Thompson had relationships with two of the five people who were murdered.
“I just — you just deflated. Just absolutely deflated.”
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Thompson worked with Hiaasen at the Baltimore Sun for 15 years.
“A very good guy,” the pastor recalled. “A good writer with a good humble sense about him and a great sense of humor.”
Wendi Winters covered stories at the church, and Thompson said she was known for sticking with the story.
“We did a ‘stations of the cross’ and she walked the whole thing with us. Some folks would just kind of dive bomb in and catch you at the beginning or catch you at the end. Right? But she was there for the whole thing. That always impressed me,” Rev. Thompson told WUSA9.
Thompson used his sermon on Saturday to connect the gospel to journalism.
He talked about how both the church and journalism have a shared goal of bringing people together.
“It doesn’t really hit home until it hits home. Then you start to think maybe there’s something else we need to be doing.”
