After a 69-year-old woman was found stabbed to death inside her church last week, a Baltimore man has vowed to stand guard outside the church every day to make sure it does not happen again.
As Christian Headlines previously reported, Evelyn Player was found dead inside Southern Baptist church in east Baltimore last Tuesday. Player, a church volunteer, arrived at the church at around 6 am on Tuesday to allow contractors renovating the church into the building.
Almost an hour later, however, a church employee found Player dead inside the bathroom in her work area.
“For somebody to come into the church and take a life, that’s a very evil person, a very evil person,” church attendee Kimkur Lee told Fox 45 in Baltimore.
Lee, 53, looked at Player as his church mother.
“Anything that you needed, Ms. Player was that. If you needed her to put her foot in your behind, she could do that for you, but most of the time, she wouldn’t do that,” he explained. “She would talk to you, love on you, and let you know that it was going to be alright.”
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott called Player’s death an “unspeakable, cowardly murder.”
“I don’t care if this person is your son, your husband, your boyfriend, your daughter, your uncle, your aunt,” he said. “You should turn this person in because if we’re OK with someone this cowardly murdering someone that could be your grandmother, that could be someone else’s grandmother, then what are we willing to stand up for?”
Lee, however, was skeptical of the mayor’s crime plan since previous attempts have been unsuccessful.
“If it’s anything like all the rest of the mayor’s plans to stop the crime, there’s didn’t work, so what’s he doing different,” he questioned.
In turn, Lee vowed to take matters into his own hands by standing guard outside the Southern Baptist Church to prevent future incidents from happening.
“I can’t and won’t sit back and let this happen to anybody else in this church,” he contended.
He told the news outlet that protecting others in Baltimore is his way of honoring Player.
In the week of Player’s murder, there were multiple other major crimes. Last Wednesday, the city recorded its 300th murder this year after a 5-year-old girl was killed. A day later, a 13-year-old girl was fatally shot outside a recreation center.
Police currently have a person of interest in the investigation of Player’s murder. Governor Larry Hogan is also offering a $100,000 reward for information resulting in an arrest.
Photo courtesy: Nagesh Badu/Unsplash
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
