Salem is recovering after stabbing at Union Gospel Mission

A man who attacked a dozen people with a knife at Salem’s Union Gospel Mission shelter on Sunday night is now in police custody, facing attempted murder and assault charges. Several of the 12 stabbing victims suffered serious injuries and were hospitalized. The Union Gospel Mission has operated in Salem for 72 years, and Director of Community Engagement Mark Hunter says, while it’s hard to make sense of the attack, he and the other staff and volunteers remain committed to their work. UGM provides food, shelter and educational programs to those experiencing homelessness with the help of hundreds of staff and volunteers and support from the community. Hunter joins us along with Executive Director Craig Smith to talk about how the community has supported the Mission in the aftermath of the attack and how the organization is thinking about security and continuing to fulfill its mission moving forward.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. A man who attacked a dozen people with a knife at Salem’s Union Gospel Mission shelter on Sunday night is now in police custody. He’s facing attempted murder and assault charges. Several of the 12 victims suffered serious injuries and were hospitalized.

The Union Gospel Mission has operated in Salem for more than 70 years. Mark Hunter, the Director of Community Engagement, has said that while it’s hard to make sense of the attack, he and the other staff and volunteers remain committed to their work.

Mark Hunter joins us now, along with Executive Director Craig Smith. It’s good to have both of you on Think Out Loud.

Mark Hunter: Thank you.

Craig Smith: Thanks, Dave.

Miller: Mark, first – for people who missed this news on Sunday evening and Monday, can you tell us what happened?

Hunter: Yes, sure. We had a gentleman that was in our facility and for unknown reasons, attacked not only our staff but guests and clients that were in the building – this was Sunday evening around 7:00 or 7:15 – in a very horrific way.

Miller: How are the people who were injured doing physically?

Hunter: We’re blessed. We’re feeling very grateful for the current status of those that were injured. Many of them have been released from the hospital, but those that have not are stable, they’re recovering and they’re responding to their treatment at this time.

Miller: What about emotionally or psychologically?

Hunter: I think any time something like this happens, there’s gonna be trauma that is attached to it for those that witnessed it or those that came alongside after the event. And there is a lot of that in our facility right now, amongst our staff as well as those that we serve. So we have to take time to work through that and it’s a case by case, work that is being done down in the day room.

A lot of community people have come alongside the county. A lot of churches have come alongside with counseling services for anybody that desires it, from staff to clients to guests to volunteers, whatever the case may be.

Miller: Craig Smith, can you give us a sense for the help that has come in since Monday in response to this?

Smith: Dave, I don’t know that I could even … it would probably take the whole time we have for me to read the list. But let me just tell you kind of how it came down. It is unbelievable who’s reached out, everyone in the community. It’s really bringing the community together. But the first call we made on Monday morning was to Summit Restoration, which is an amazing group of folks here in Salem. And they dropped everything they had, sent their trucks and their team down here to help us restore the Mission. We got it up and running that same day.

Miller: So that was some physical plant help?

Smith: Yeah.

Miller: OK.

Smith: Yeah, and just everybody in the community has come. The churches are amazing. We’ve had offers, like Mark said, for counseling services, but just prayer, people to come down and sit with us, walk with us. At 10 a.m. we had a prayer meeting here and I don’t … Mark, you know how many people we had here? I don’t even know. It was hundreds.

Hunter: It was hundreds, yes.

Smith: And from all over the community to pray with us for those who were injured, to pray for the mission and the ministry here, which is strong and doing well.

Miller: Craig, you just started about five weeks ago, just the beginning of May. This seems like a trial by fire. How are you doing?

Smith: You never are prepared for something like this. So to say that I’m doing really, really well, but I’m tired and I am also extremely grateful. It’s supernatural. The Lord has just undertaken for me and for everyone here. We have an amazing staff. I’d love to tell you, maybe I get a chance here to tell you a couple of stories about the resilience of my staff, who they are and how much they trust the Lord, but it’s been an amazing time, Dave. I’m doing quite well, even though I have never experienced anything like this before, hope to never experience it again, but the Lord’s really undertaken for me.

And we’ve had a ton of help. I can just tell you this morning, even, [the] Salem PD, who was right on the spot when this happened, they have offered us all kinds of help. They’ve opened their doors. I don’t know how many officers were at our prayer meeting this morning. They lined the windows. I could cry right now just thinking about it, because I stood up to the podium, I looked up and I didn’t see them come in, and they were all lined along the side of the building. A lot of those guys were the ones that came and helped us. We’re right across the street from the police department, which is kind of amazing. But Dave, it has just been unbelievable.

Miller: You said you could tell countless stories of your staff’s resilience. Is there one that stands out just in this moment right now?

Smith: Yeah, yeah. So this attack occurred at 7:15 in the evening and I left the building probably about 1:15, 1:30. Our operations manager left about 2:30. The Salem forensics, the PD forensics team finished with the crime scene at about 3:30. And at 4:00, our kitchen staff came in through the back door because they couldn’t come in any other way, got in the kitchen. And when I got to work at 5:45 that next morning, there were 150 guys sitting at tables out in our parking lot eating breakfast.

Miller: In other words, there wasn’t a break in the services that you offer?

Smith: Not even one. We didn’t miss a single meal. We didn’t miss a single service that we provide. And we were reopened by 5:30 in the afternoon for dinner, chapel and beds.

Miller: Craig was saying that there has not been a break in services. Mark, can you give us a sense for what services you do provide on the three floors of this operation?

Hunter: Absolutely. I kind of have each floor labeled. The first floor is the hospitality floor, where we’re able to meet the men and women. We do have minimal services for women, but we also have a women’s shelter. But the hospitality floor is meeting our guests and clients where they’re at, trying to identify what their needs are, whether it’s job search, home search, mental health care, physical care, whatever the case may be. And that’s where our food services takes place, on the hospitality floor.

The second floor of our facility is called the shelter floor. That’s the floor that you would typically say, OK, we want people to get out of the weather, the elements or whatever the case may be, and have a warm and safe bed. There’s 206 beds on that second floor.

Moving on into the third floor, we call that our transformation floor. That floor is where clients and guests have the option to enter a long-term care program, and work on whatever it is that they need to work on to return to the community healthy and whole. They deal with things like addictive behavior, they deal with things like false beliefs, they deal with things of just how to cope in the world today.

So those are the three floors that we provide services for. And I want to add, on the third floor, we have an amazing learning center where men and women can work on their GED. If they’re qualified, we have a full ride scholarship to Chemeketa Community College available for those that would like to do that.

Miller: Has anything like this, Mark, ever happened at the Union Gospel Mission?

Hunter: The honest answer is there have been violent outbursts, but nothing like this. As Craig said, there’s just absolutely nothing that we could have done. We prepare for these incidents with de-escalation training, with contacts with local law enforcement, but at this level, no, nothing like this has happened. But again, as Craig says, we’re so grateful for our local law enforcement, fire department, Salem Health, for how they came together to help us that night.

Miller: Have you made changes to any of your protocols, security or otherwise, in response to this incident?

Smith: I can speak to that. We are in the process of reviewing everything. We have a pretty good safety protocol here. We lock down our doors at around 7:00, 7:30 each evening and access is only through buzzers. We also require all of our guests to check their bags when they walk in the front door in a locked and secure baggage storage area, so that they can’t bring contraband into the mission. No one is allowed to bring in bags or backpacks into the Mission on the floor. So that security process. Plus, we know a lot of the people that we serve here because they’re not just here one night, they’re here for many nights, a lot of them. So we get to know them, we understand their tendencies. And then when we have new people, we try to get to know them so that we can assess their stability.

We have security in place, but the question then comes, what could we do differently, what could we do better? I actually was just talking to the deputy chief of the Salem PD this morning about that. And both the sheriff, Nick Hunter, and the Salem Police Department have offered to come meet with us, talk to us, evaluate and help us understand how we might be able to do some things better without … The balance point here, Dave, and this is an important point, is that the ministry that we offer to the people that we serve, they don’t have a real good relationship with authority and police.

So while we love those guys, we can’t have them on site cause no one would come. And then if we put security guards out, the same thing happens. So we have to thread the needle between security and being able to deliver the services that we want to serve for these people that need us, so that they’ll come here. We’re in the process of reevaluating all of that. We have some ideas, but we’ll probably get pretty serious about that in the next couple of days.

Miller: Craig, is it fair to say that you love the men and women that you’re serving, that this Mission is an act of love?

Smith: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Miller: OK, I asked that question because I can imagine that after a violent attack like you all experienced, that it might be hard to prevent a sense of fear from creeping in or a wariness that could lead to distance between you and the people that you’re serving. How do you think about that?

Smith: Oh yeah, that’s such a good question. Thank you. The way we do that is because we’re the Union Gospel Mission. We trust Jesus. And our belief and our hope is rooted in the goodness and kindness of God – and therefore we are committed. This is why we serve breakfast at 5:30 on Monday morning, because we knew those guys would be hungry and they had no place else to go. It is up to us. God has called us to this ministry and we do love these people. We love them.

I mean, I can’t even begin to tell you. I’ve only been here 30 days. I’m in awe, every day, of my staff. They are unbelievable people. So that’s how, Dave. I mean, are we scared? Yes, yeah, absolutely. Are we shaken? Absolutely. Are we gonna do everything that we can to keep ourselves safe? Absolutely, but our commitment to this community and to the people we serve is that we will stand and we will not back down. We are going to deliver the gospel and the services that we have here no matter what. And that’s the kind of staff I have. I’m so proud of them. I can’t even tell you how proud of them I am.

Miller: You said in a note on your website earlier this week that the service, the one that just happened that ended about an hour and 20 minutes ago, that it would include a message of hope. What was that message?

Smith: What was basically the message I just gave you. In Isaiah 41:10, it says this: “Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” And you can read those words – and I have in my life – and say, well, that’s pretty cool, but how does that really impact me? When you get into a time like this, we are being upheld by God’s righteous right hand and we are looking forward with hope, because we have Jesus.

Miller: Craig Smith and Mark Hunter, thanks very much.

Hunter: Thank you.

Smith: Thanks, Dave, so much for having us. It’s really a privilege.

Miller: Craig Smith is the Executive Director of the Union Gospel Mission in Salem. Mark Hunter is the Director of Community Engagement there.

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