In the winter of 2007, a 26-year-old woman named Tiffany Johnson was living a life dedicated to her faith and a desire to help others. Originally from Chisholm, Minnesota, she had traveled to far-flung places like Egypt, Libya, and South Africa as a missionary. Her adventurous and friendly spirit was well-known among her friends and family, who described her as a leader who loved to laugh and could have done anything she set her mind to.
At the time of her death, she was serving as the Director of Hospitality at the Youth With a Mission training center in Arvada, Colorado, a suburb of Denver.
On the morning of December 9, 2007, the course of many lives was irrevocably altered. A 24-year-old man named Matthew John Murray, a former trainee who had been dismissed from the YWAM center years earlier due to strange behavior, arrived at the facility. When his request to spend the night was denied, Murray opened fire. In the ensuing violence, Tiffany Johnson and a fellow staff member, Philip Crouse, were tragically killed. Two other people were also wounded in the attack.
The rampage did not end in Arvada. Later that same day, Murray drove to Colorado Springs and launched another attack at the New Life Church. There, he killed two teenage sisters and wounded their father before he was confronted by a volunteer security guard at the church, a former police officer named Jeanne Assam. Assam shot and wounded Murray, who then took his own life. The investigation that followed revealed Murray's deep-seated animosity towards Christians, expressed in numerous online postings leading up to the shootings. Inside his car, authorities found a letter addressed 'To God' and books on serial murderers. In the wake of the tragedy, Tiffany Johnson was remembered by loved ones as a beautiful and extraordinary person who wanted to change the world by loving people.
