"I felt the tug on my sleeve and looked down to find him standing motionless. His mouth was moving but I couldn’t make out his words. His quiet body in the noisy room caught me off guard. I bent down to find his voice."
"Tears-pouring-down-my-face, couldn't-talk-couldn't-breathe kind of laughing. Screaming laughing. So hard that I was sobbing because I couldn't get it together."
Just seven days after it became the scene of the deadliest shooting in Texas history, First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, reopened its doors on Sunday to commemorate the 26 lives lost just one week prior.
Ryland’s uncle Michael Ward told The New York Daily News that he carried his nephew out of the church following the attack, where a helicopter rushed him to the hospital. According to the outlet, he’d found the child “clinging to a church pew” after the shooting.
