ChurchBeat

September 30, 2026

Lincoln Brooks was 11 when a gunman threatened his life at church last year in Grand Blanc, Michigan, and he’d like to tell you about what has helped him recover from the trauma.

You’d like Lincoln. He is 12 now. The seventh grader passes the sacrament each Sunday as a deacon in the priesthood of the Grand Blanc Ward. He loves dogs, running, “Calvin and Hobbes,” watching any sport and acting in plays.

But a year ago this week, he ran out of the chapel with his parents and sisters after the attack began. The killer murdered four people in a hail of bullets and arson that burned down the meetinghouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Lincoln listened to gunfire and the screams of other children while he hid with his mother and sisters in a tiny room that soon filled with chemical-laden black smoke. He poured water on his shirt and covered his mouth to filter the air.

While they waited for the police to arrive, just the way he’d been trained over and over again at school, time started to run out.

“I said like seven prayers while were in the room,” Lincoln said.

His mother, Katie Brooks, told the Deseret News that she considered an unthinkable question at that moment: Would it be better for her children to die in the flames or should she lead them into the gunfire.

Fortunately, they suddenly heard first responders right outside. When they threw the window open, Katie grabbed Lincoln and tossed him through it.

The boy was pretty banged up and covered in soot that got in his eyes and nose and throat and hair. But he was alive. He’d tried to follow his father out of the chapel, but they got separated in the haze of chaos. After he and his sisters ran to safety in the woods behind the building, they tried to come to grips with the fear that Rick Brooks might be dead.

Then Lincoln pointed. “It’s dad,” he yelled. He’ll never forget the sight or the feeling.

The family’s reunion was joyous and terrible and tear-stained.

“It’s the most broken I’ve ever seen my children,” Katie Brooks said.

The family spent hours at a local movie theater that afternoon and evening so they could be interviewed by the FBI and other investigators.

When they were pulling up to their house in the dark that night, Lincoln spotted the neighbor’s dog, Oliver. Suddenly, he knew he needed Oliver. His mom agreed, and Lincoln ran to the dog.

Hurdles awaited. Lincoln faced two major emotional tests two days later, when he went back to school. First, he had a cross country race in the afternoon, and it would require him to run portions of the race alone in the woods because he knew the leg that was injured when his mom threw him through the window would force him to fall behind his teammates.

He made it through the first mile, but as he started the second mile alone, his anxiety spiked. Just then, a teammate left the pace of the race, fell back and ran the rest of the race with Lincoln.

The second test was attending a fireside with Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Lincoln did not want to go back into a church building, even if this one was in Flint, 15 miles from Grand Blanc.

When they arrived, his parents pointed out all the police cars and officers guarding the building. Their presence helped only to a point. Once he was inside, he felt like he needed an escape plan.

“I was looking at all the ways to get out,” he said.

More tests would come. He did not like trucks for a while, because the shooter began his rampage by sledgehammering his pickup into the meetinghouse. He never liked active shooter trainings at school, and the school excused him from them until three weeks ago.

“I was furious with some of the kids,” he says, “because some of them were dying laughing during it. When it was done I went to them and said, ‘Why is that funny?’”

As a Latter-day Saint living in Linden, Michigan, Lincoln is part of a tiny minority. He is the only church member in his entire school.

But Lincoln said he hasn’t felt like a minority at school since the shooting. The cross-country team brought him a card and flowers in the aftermath of the tragedy. For the first month back at school, everyone in the sixth grade checked on him constantly to make sure he was OK, even a kid who previously had been a challenge. It still happens, and he’s grateful.

He would like others to know that this kind of human connection has been vital. He felt more of that healing connection three weeks after the ordeal when the Grand Blanc Ward met again for the first time because of breaks for general conference and stake conference.

“The first week back,” he said proudly, “we had record-breaking attendance.”

It was another church activity at a local state park in July that provided five of the best days of the past year for Lincoln.

“Young Men’s camp really helped me,” he said, “because all of the stake Young Men were there so there were more people to comfort the Grand Blanc people. It was great to meet friends from other wards, because every morning we would read some scriptures and have a fireside. I don’t remember which scriptures, but they were really comforting.”

Like everyone else, Lincoln has wondered why the shooter took out his rage on the Latter-day Saints of Grand Blanc.

He found some profound wisdom in one of his “Calvin and Hobbes” books when the boy and his tiger get robbed.

As Lincoln remembers it, the cartoon panel said, “This is one thing you always think is going to happen to other people.”

“Now,” he said, “to everyone else we are the other people.”

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