Police charged one retired pastor in the slaying of another pastor on Labor Day, according to reports.
Ted Merchant, the pastor at a Chicago-area senior center, shot retired Baptist minister Allen Smith dead.
The two often sat on the back porch of the center, a fellow retiree said. They’d discuss theology for hours.
“They’d talk about Bible passages and ideas about God. They always had little arguments going on about things like that,” Dorothy Hull told the Chicago Tribune.
“I just can’t get over it because he had a church in the community room every Sunday morning. He was retired too, but he had this church going on. I just couldn’t believe he did that,” Hull said of Merchant.
Merchant has been charged with first-degree murder.
