In late September 2025, a Sunday service at a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan, ended in tragedy after a driver rammed the church, opened fire and set the building alight, killing at least four people and wounding eight.
Police later identified the lone suspect as 40-year-old Thomas Jacob Sanford from Burton, about a 10-mile drive away from Grand Blanc Township.
After police confirmed the suspect's identity, a claim (archived) circulated online that Sanford was a conservative and/or a supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump's Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.
For example, the Facebook page of the liberal media outlet Occupy Democrats posted on Facebook, "Like clockwork, it turns out the shooter was MAGA. Yet AGAIN" and claimed the suspect was "a totally homegrown CONSERVATIVE."
Claims about the suspect being a conservative or a Trump supporter also circulated on X (archived), Threads (archived), Instagram (archived) and Bluesky (archived). Snopes readers also wrote in asking about Sanford's political affiliation.
At the time of this writing, officials had not indicated whether Sanford belonged to a party or whether his politics were connected with the motive for Sunday's shooting, the latter of which officials had also not confirmed. Michigan voters do not register to vote by party affiliation, so it was not possible to establish through public records whether Sanford was registered with a political party. We found no active social media profiles for Sanford at the time of this writing, so it was not possible to establish his political opinions from his online presence.
Some internet users circulated an image appearing to show Sanford wearing a Trump-branded shirt with visible text reading, "Trump 2020" and "Liberals Cry Again." That photo, which appeared to be authentic, came from a 2019 post from a Facebook page dedicated to the suspect's child, who was then 4 years old.
Another image internet users shared as supposed proof of Sanford's political beliefs was Google Street View imagery of Sanford's home from June 2025, showing a Trump sign on a fence. The home in the image did appear to be the one Sandford had lived in since 2016, according to online people search engines Spokeo and BeenVerified. The Trump sign in the image was located just above a stop sign, and it was unclear whether the intended message was pro- or anti-Trump.
In the links above, we anonymized the appearances of Sanford's wife and child as well as Sanford's address to preserve the family's privacy.
An account apparently belonging to Sanford's wife also
Snopes linked Sanford's wife's account and the account dedicated to their child by a photo that appeared in a news report about the family from 2016 and on both the wife and child's accounts.
Grand Blanc Township Police Department Chief William Renye said "hundreds" of worshippers, including children, were inside the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc Township when Sanford entered and began firing his weapon around 10:25 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 28. A fire at the church, which Renye said police believed Sanford started, burned for several hours.
FBI Acting Special Agent in Charge for the bureau's Detroit office Ruben Coleman described the incident as an "act of targeted violence" and said the bureau was investigating. Renye said on Sept. 29 that everyone involved in the incident was accounted for as investigators continued to work at the scene.