ENA Grant, 56, was shot dead and another elderly woman injured as they worshipped at the Bethel Born Again True Faith Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ in St Andrew at about 9:30 pm Sunday night.

The gunman opened fire as the pastor delivered his sermon in the small wooden building in the Land Lease community.

An eyewitness to the incident, too scared to be identified, told the Observer that the assassin went to the altar as the pastor preached and was warmly greeted by the man of cloth.

“Him walk up to the altar while the pastor was preaching and pastor tell him say may God Bless him. Him stop little before him take out the gun and point it at the lady,” the eyewitness claimed.

The armed man pulled the trigger twice but his gun jammed and Grant valiantly tried to use her Bible to hit the weapon from her attacker’s hand. She almost disarmed him, a church member said.

“The gun stick and the people start bawl out ‘The blood of Jesus is upon you’. She use her bible and lick him and the gun drop,” the eyewitness told the Observer.

But the gunman, determined that Grant must die, simply went outside, fixed his jammed weapon and walked back into the house of worship where he pumped three shots into her body.

Grant, who was from Kintyre, was hit just over her right eye and armpit. When the Observer arrived, her lifeless body was still on the church floor. Her glasses, minus the right lens, were perched on her face and her Bible was trapped beneath her body, soaked crimson by her blood.

Shoes, tambourines, folding chairs and Bibles were strewn all over the floor of the church indicating the mad rush that had taken place inside the building.

“Pastor run and leave all him jacket,” one eyewitness said, pointing to a blazer lying on a section of the altar.

One officer from the Papine police station, unnerved by the attack on the place of worship, branded the killer an animal.

“Whoever did this is an animal. How can anyone think of committing a murder in a church?” the officer asked incredulously, shaking his head in despair.

Unlike other death scenes where scores of persons usually gather behind police tape, hardly anyone came out of their homes in Land Lease on Sunday night. An eerie calm hovered over the area and the only persons at the scene of the crime were two church members, the police, and a handful of Grant’s relatives.

The Papine police who are investigating the murder say no motive has yet been established for the killing.

The 59 year-old woman who was injured was treated at hospital and sent home.