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Pastor comforts U.S. veteran: Heartwarming moment during tragic incident caught on tape

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A U.S. veteran is overwhelmed during memorial ceremony for the lost Marines.

Local Tennessee media caught the amazing moment one U.S. veteran broke down in tears and an unidentified pastor comforting him at the site where four Marines and one Navy service member where shot and killed. The violent event that took place in Chattanooga, Tennessee last Thursday was being treated as a "domestic act of terrorism," according to reports. The identified shooter was reported dead.

Highlights

MUNTINLUPA, PHILIPPINES (Catholic Online) - In the footage, the pastor is seen kneeling with the unidentified veteran who cried and mourned for his colleagues, comforting and praying with him during the memorial held for those who were tragically killed. WKRN-TV, the station that documented the encounter between the two, explained that the engagement was one of the "tender moments that emerged" in the middle of the memorial ceremony.

"A pastor came over beside him, kneeled down and started praying with him and for him," said Samantha Fisher, reporting for the station, as cited in The Blaze. The devastated and emotional U.S. veteran was interviewed for a short while, and expressed his shock and disappointment over the horrific violence that occurred that day.

"Why? Why would you try to hurt the people that volunteer to protect you? The people that would take a bullet for you... that doesn't make sense to me," he said. The gunman, identified as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, 24, killed four Marines, while wounding a police officer and a Navy man, who later died. Police confirmed that the shooter, who attacked two military facilities, is dead.

"Lives have been lost from some faithful people who have been serving our country, and I think I join all Tennesseans in being both sickened and saddened by this," said Governor Bill Haslam on the horrific violent incident, which is still under investigation.

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