Contact: John M. Snyder, 703-212-9863
ARLINGTON, Virg. Dec. 14 /Christian Newswire/ -- The St. Gabriel Possenti Society, Inc. this week awarded Jeanne Assam of New Life Church in Colorado Springs its Medal and Certificate of Honor, Society Founder/Chairman John M. Snyder announced here today.
Snyder recalled that during last Sunday's church services Assam, an armed private citizen voluntarily guarding the congregation, fired her weapon effectively to stop a reportedly anti-Christian madman. The madman apparently was bent on mass murder after he had killed two of the innocent worshippers.
According to news reports, Assam, armed with a handgun for which she has a concealed carry permit and from which she fired 10 rounds, faced down the murderer armed with two semiautomatic handguns and two semiautomatic rifles and carrying 1,000 rounds of ammunition. Assam later said that "God was with me" during the incident and that she had prayed to the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, before placing herself in the path of the murderer and shooting him. He then committed suicide.
Snyder said that "Assam is a true heroine who manifests the qualities of personal courage, faith in Almighty God, and genuine charity towards one's neighbors valued so highly by our Society. She certainly is most deserving of this Award. I sent it to her in care of Rev. Brady Boyd, her church's Senior Pastor who said that she probably had saved the lives of a hundred people by her action."
The interdenominational Society is named for St. Gabriel Possenti, a Catholic seminarian who used a handgun to rescue villagers of Isola del Gran Sasso, Italy from a gang of 20 marauders in 1860. After rescuing a young woman from a rapist, Possenti's single-shot shooting of a running lizard so impressed the gang that they willingly obeyed his orders to disarm and leave town. Possenti died a couple of years later of natural causes and was canonized by Pope Benedict XV in 1920. The international Society seeks Possenti's official Vatican designation as Patron of Handgunners.
The Society's Medal of Honor features an image of Possenti flanked by silhouettes of a lizard and a handgun and surrounded by appropriate lettering. Snyder also sent Assam an autographed copy of Gun Saint, his biography of the Saint, as well as a lapel pin featuring an image of the Society's emblem. A picture of the Medal of Honor may be obtained on request by email to gundean@aol.com.
