Pastor Greg Locke says family won’t return home after drive-by shooting
Controversial Tennessee Pastor Greg Locke says he and his family will not be returning to their home following a "surreal" drive-by shooting in which gunmen riddled his house and truck with 60 bullets in less than three seconds just over a week ago.
"We have not been allowed to be back at our house since then, and other than packing stuff up, we're not going back anyhow," Locke told his congregation Sunday. "They told us that they fear retaliation at this moment."
Wilson County Sheriff's Office Capt. Scott Moore told The Tennessean that the shooting, which is being investigated, resulted in no injuries, and authorities haven't arrested anyone in connection with the incident yet.
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Moore said deputies responded to Locke's home at around 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 4, and found 30 to 40 shell casings around the house, the garage and a vehicle.
Locke, who leads Global Vision Bible Church in Mount Juliet, said he believes the Lord slowed his family while they were driving home from Pigeon Forge on the night of the shooting.
When they returned home, he said they initially thought someone had broken beer bottles on the property. As he and his wife continued inspecting the property, it dawned on them that their home had been attacked.
"All of a sudden I began to realize it (bullets)went through the wall and the headboard and Destiny's room, and you know, riddle the truck up and the garage, and we're talking about from the bottom of the driveway all the way up through the back of the truck, the middle of the truck, out the front of the truck, through the garage door, all the way out the back of the garage, into the fence, at the very back of the property," he said. "So we're not talking about a Daisy BB gun."
Locke said he armed himself with an AR-15 along with a handgun and began searching his property as his wife, Tai, frantically called the police.
"I'm running around the house like a madman with an AR in my hand and a 9mm in my back pocket, not knowing what's going on. And, by the way, you can criticize that all you want to, but I'm here to tell you one day, the government's not going to protect you, and the police aren't going to show up in time, and you better know how to protect your family, you hear me?" he told his church.
Locke said waiting for the police to show up felt like "an eternity" as his wife begged them for help.
"Your wife's on the phone screaming at them to 'Get here! Get here!' I mean, it really does seem like a long time, and you know, the kids are hollering at me, 'Don't go on the porch!' And I'm running around like a mad man. Then they show up," Locke said of the police.
The officers, he said, were taking no chances, and they stunningly told him to "Put your hands in the air."
"I'm like,' It's my house,'" he recalled telling the officers.
Despite being surprised by the reaction of the police, Locke said he complied with everything they asked him to do.
"So I put the AR down and they said 'turn around. Put your hands up. Walk backwards. Get on your knees.' And so I'm doing all that, and I'm like, 'I got one in my back pocket too. You might want to get that before I get down.' It was a surreal moment," he said.
Locke said the security footage of the shooting recovered by investigators recorded two cars.
"It ended up actually being a couple of cars that were involved, but the main car and the driver and the shooter, which by the way, can I say to the Twitter world, the camera will show you that it wasn't me standing at the end of my driveway putting my family in jeopardy pulling a trigger. You people are stupid," Locke argued.
"What happened was when he [shooter] jumps in the car and leaves, the security footage shows one minute later my wife pulls into the driveway with the kids and the grandkids in the SUV, one minute after he [shooter] sprayed the house and drove off. I came in a minute behind that," he explained.
Locke played the sound of 60 rounds being shot into his property in "less than three seconds."
"The detective said he'd never seen that many spent shell casings in a drive by shooting situation like this," Locke said.
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