SENECA, Kan. (AP) — An Oklahoma man has been charged with first-degree murder in the fatal shooting a Catholic priest at a church rectory in northeast Kansas, authorities said Friday.
Officers called to the Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Seneca on Thursday afternoon found Arul Carasala with gunshot wounds outside the rectory, the Nemaha County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post. The 57-year-old priest was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he died.
Sheriff’s deputies and officers with the Seneca Police Department later arrested Gary Hermesch of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hermesch, 66, was charged Friday and held in the Nemaha County Jail in lieu of $1 million bond, County Attorney Brad Lippert said Friday in a written statement.
The charging complaint says that Hermesch “intentionally and with premeditation” killed Carasala, Lippert said. Lippert did not return phone and email messages Friday seeking more information.
Authorities have not released a possible motive for the shooting or said whether the suspect and the priest knew each other.
Kris Anderson, the parish’s director of religious education, told the AP on Thursday through tears that she knew few details.
“From what we know, an older man walked up to him (Carasala) and shot him three times,” she said.
The priest’s death left people in shock in Seneca, a city of about 2,100 where Carasala had been the pastor at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church since 2011, according to his profile on the parish website.
Carasala was ordained as a priest in 1994 for the Diocese of Cuddapah, located on the southeast coast of his native India. He had served in Kansas since 2004, including as pastor of five Kansas parishes, after he was invited to visit by Archbishop James P. Keleher. Carasala became a U.S. citizen in 2011, while retaining his status as an overseas citizen of India.
Archbishop Joseph Naumann of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas said in a Facebook post that there was no ongoing threat to the community, but that he recognized the “pain and shock” the priest’s death had brought to the community.
“This senseless act of violence has left us grieving the loss of a beloved priest, leader, and friend,” he wrote.
Seneca is about 60 miles north of Topeka.
