Midwest

Arkansas preacher who was shot while sharing gospel forgives gunman: 'We can't hold bitterness and anger'

Published

2 years ago

June 28, 2024

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Arkansas preacher who was shot while sharing gospel forgives gunman: 'We can't hold bitterness and anger'

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Reverend Larry Oneal Walker spends his Sundays preaching at a busy intersection in North Little Rock, Arkansas.

The street preacher recently spoke out after a gunman opened fire while he was sharing the gospel on June 2. Walker reflected on the moment that could have taken his life.

Walker told Fox News Digital in an on-camera interview that a man aggressively approached him and attempted to grab his microphone. (See the video at the top of this article.)

‘JESUS IS HERE’: THOUSANDS JOIN EUCHARISTIC PROCESSION IN WASHINGTON, DC

When Walker told the man he could not have it, the man said he had a gun.

The two struggled, and the man shot him.

Street preacher Larry Oneal Walker prays at a busy Arkansas intersection every Sunday. (LaKiesa Walker)

“I fell to the ground, checked my side with a handful of blood. The next thing I did was put my hands on my head and started praying,” Walker said.

Walker said he forgives the man who shot him, citing John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son.”

AMERICAN DOCTOR, FUELED BY FAITH, BRINGS HEALTH AND HEALING TO RURAL SUDAN: ‘GOD IS IN CHARGE’

“As a Christian, we must forgive one another,” said Walker.

“We can’t hold bitterness and anger and strife in our hearts against one another.”

Rev. Larry Oneal Walker has been preaching for over 50 years; he’s been preaching in the streets for the past 15 years. “I see miracles all the time, all the time,” he told Fox News Digital. (LaKiesa Walker)

Walker said the doctors told him the manner in which the bullet entered the side of his body was “a miracle” as it grazed past his vital organs.

SOUTH CAROLINA PRIEST SAYS FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI IS A REMINDER THAT GOD WANTS ‘TO BE WITH US’

“I see miracles all the time, all the time. That’s why I said, ‘I cannot die. I will not die. I can’t get sick. I will not get sick because the Lord has given me life,’” he said.

LaKeisa Walker, Walker’s daughter, said it was a horrific moment when she answered the phone and learned that her father had been shot.

Larry Oneal Walker was shot on June 2 while preaching at a busy Arkansas intersection. (LaKiesa Walker)

“We were standing on the scripture that, ‘No weapon formed against you shall prosper,’ so we believed that that was a weapon formed against him, but it did not prosper… God manifested a healing, a miracle through him that day,” she told Fox News Digital.

She said her father’s story touched not just the Arkansas community, but hers in Texas as well.

“They are just like, ‘That was God.’ It strengthened not only my faith, but the whole community,” she said.

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Walker has been preaching for the past 50 years.

He began street preaching 15 years ago.

“This is why our nation has been so strong, because we believe in the Almighty God,” said Walker.

Walker told Fox News Digital that he forgives the man who shot him on June 2, adding, “We can’t hold bitterness and anger and strife in our hearts against one another.” (LaKeisa Walker)

He said America is healing — and that the loss of faith across the country has led to confusion and division.

Between 2007 and 2021, the percentage of adults who identify as not religiously affiliated has grown from 16% to 29%, according to the Pew Research Center.

“America had been wounded with this evil spirit of hate,” said Walker.

“Well, we’re loving people. America [is] the best, blessed nation on the planet. There is no other nation greater than America.”

Eighty percent of U.S. adults say that religion has lost its influence in society, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in February.

“We need to turn to God.”

LaKeisa Walker said, “We need to turn to God. I think this can be a beginning, a genesis of a movement across the country… Turn to God in such a time as this that our world is heading in right now.”

Walker has not had any contact with the suspect since the incident.

The individual, identified as 20-year-old Latarryes Bush of North Little Rock, is currently being held without bond, pending his initial court appearance in North Little Rock District Court, Fox News Digital learned in a media release shared by the North Little Rock Police Department.

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Illinois

Where Route 66 begins: A tale of boom, bust, baseball, and a ‘big house’

Published

6 minutes ago

May 2, 2026

Press Room

Where Route 66 begins: A tale of boom, bust, baseball, and a ‘big house’

Editor’s note: This story is part of the Monitor’s summerlong series following old U.S. Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica, California.

Just a few blocks from the Old Joliet Prison, Johnny Williams is standing outside a tire shop, waiting for a repair.

He’s a lifelong resident of the Joliet area, a father of six and grandfather of 10, and he remembers back in the day when the prison was part of the economic engine that made Joliet run.

Why We Wrote This

Route 66 courses through American cities that once flourished before their economies faded or were forced to change. The story of Joliet, Illinois, reflects the high times, the hardships and the reinvention found along the century-old road.

“I remember when people used to sit out there visiting their people — on the buses, you know?” Mr. Williams says. “I have plenty of people whose parents and uncles worked there.” He gestures toward the 25-foot limestone walls, still topped with razor wire. “And as a child, I would always wonder — what’s behind that wall?”

So, he still marvels at how the once imposing former state penitentiary has been transformed over the past decade. Today, the people walking through its front gate are not prisoners or staff, but tourists and Americana-lovers there to have fun and celebrate the centennial of Route 66. The iconic roadway, noted in hundreds of anthems about America, passed right by the prison until 1940, when it was rerouted a few blocks away.

The prison once housed such infamous criminals as Richard Speck, James Earl Ray, and John Wayne Gacy. But since its closing in 2002, it has become a site for concerts, film viewings, and today, an event dubbed “The Big House Ballgame.”

People wondered about the prison for decades, said Quinn Adamowski, board president of the Joliet Area Historical Museum, which now runs the prison, before the game. “This site defined Joliet in many ways.”

After the prison closed, it was largely abandoned, becoming a liability, Mr. Adamowski said, especially in this neighborhood. “In 2017, 160 years after the first inmates arrived, we had the opportunity to wonder what this site could be,” he added. “It was our time – Joliet’s time – to define the prison.”

The Big House Ballgame on April 30, which is the 100th anniversary of the naming of Route 66, featured the Joliet Slammers, a Frontier League baseball team co-owned by actor Bill Murray. It was one of the featured events of an official five-city kickoff of events commemorating America’s “Mother Road.”

Baseball was also part of the prison’s history. In the early 20th century, inmates formed teams and played games against one another and against outside clubs, part of a broader effort to impose order and routine within the prison. The Big House Ballgame today is, in part, an attempt to revive that history — to connect the present moment to something that had once taken place on the same ground.

What happened to Joliet over the past century and a half happened, in some version, to nearly every city and town along Route 66. The collapse of jobs, travel routes, and movement west – and then a slow, uncertain reinvention.

The roadway passed through working America, and then through America after the work was gone. The centennial is, among other things, a celebration of the survival of places that kept going when the economies that made them no longer existed.

***

Curt Herron, like Mr. Williams, has lived in this part of Will County his whole life, growing up in Lockport, a small city just north of Joliet, before spending 45 years as a sports reporter covering high schools, the Slammers, and nearly every sporting event in between. Today, he’s an assistant at the historical museum.

Harry Bruinius/The Christian Science Monitor

Curt Herron, an assistant with the Joliet Area Historical Museum, stands near the front gate of the Old Joliet Prison, April 30, 2026. He is a lifelong resident of the area and spent 45 years as a local sports writer.

“Joliet was always a real working-class city,” he says, pausing in the shadow of a guard tower as a group of tourists photographs the cellblock windows above him. “The second biggest steel city in the country after Pittsburgh. And then, on top of that, a prison city — two prisons within a few miles of each other, running simultaneously for 75 years. Almost nowhere in America can say that,” he says, noting that the area’s other prison, Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, is still in operation.

The steel came first. In 1869, the Joliet Iron and Steel Works opened along the Des Plaines River, drawing on the region’s coal deposits and its limestone – the same blue-gray stone that built the prison walls, the same stone quarried from just beneath the city’s surface – to become one of the great industrial enterprises of the Gilded Age. At its height, it employed thousands of men and produced the railroad rails that stitched together the American West.

Joliet drew immigrant workers in successive waves: first, the Irish who dug the Illinois and Michigan Canal in the 1840s; then Poles, Lithuanians, and Eastern Europeans; then African Americans and Mexican migrants during the First World War. Joliet became, in the language of the era, a city of stone and steel – proud of its grit and defined by its labor, built on the conviction that hard work in a hard place was its own kind of American story.

Then, the steel left. By the early 1980s, the mill was gone, and the unemployment rate in Joliet climbed to 26% – among the highest of any city in the United States at the time. The limestone ruins of the ironworks sat empty along the river for decades, overgrown with vegetation, before the Forest Preserve District turned them into a heritage trail.

A wound, converted in time into a park.

“We were known for being a hardscrabble place,” Mr. Herron says. “Because of the prisons and the steel industry and a lot of working-class people. But that’s not a bad thing. It’s also led to a real competitive area – a lot of great athletes have come from here, a lot of people who’ve gone on to do remarkable things.” These include actors Nick Offerman and Melissa McCarthy, two Super Bowl-winning football players, and a WNBA champion.

But transportation has been, and remains, a major driver of Joliet’s economic engine. The Illinois and Michigan Canal and the railroads that followed in the 19th and 20th centuries once spurred its growth. Today, vast inland port complexes make Joliet one of the major freight hubs in North America.

And then, Route 66, which ran directly through downtown, across the Des Plaines River at the Ruby Street Bridge, helped make Joliet a destination for travelers.

The state is betting that Route 66 travel will continue to help the local economy, said Catie Sheehan, the Illinois deputy director of tourism and a Route 66 Centennial commissioner. “Joliet is one of nearly 100 communities along the Illinois stretch of the Mother Road. These towns bring Route 66 to life in so many different ways.”

Her tourism office has funded a suite of new roadside attractions for the centennial: a 20-foot “Tire Tower” for Joliet’s Chicagoland Speedway, a 12-foot penny for Lincoln, Illinois, and a 14-foot statue of Abraham Lincoln for Granite City.

“A lot of Midwestern industrial towns have fallen by the wayside and haven’t recovered,” Mr. Herron says. “Transportation saved the day – it’s always been about roads and waterways here.”

***

Dan Goedert is sitting in the stands at The Big House Ballgame, dressed as a prisoner with a black and white striped shirt.

Harry Bruinius/The Christian Science Monitor

Dan Goedert, a retired emergency room nurse, sits in the stands wearing a makeshift prisoner’s shirt before the start of The Big House Ballgame at the Old Joliet Prison, April 30, 2026.

A retired emergency room nurse, Mr. Goedert has posed for a few pictures already. “I just read about this yesterday,” he says. “So, I just came to have a little fun today.”

The group Billy Branch and the Sons of Blues have been playing in the old prison yard, along with local blues singer Sheryl Youngblood. They do a spirited version of “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66.”

But the old prison, like Route 66, has a legendary pop cultural connection. “We like history, and we’re old, so we remember the ‘Blues Brothers,’” says Sue Bradley, a special education teacher sitting on the grass before the game with her husband John, who works in finance. She gestures toward people wearing fedoras and black suits and ties. “You’ll see people dressed like them everywhere here today. This is the prison they got out of at the beginning of the movie.”

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Indiana

Rapid Reaction: Indiana stomps Northwestern 9-2 at Wrigley Field

Published

12 minutes ago

May 2, 2026

Press Room

Rapid Reaction: Indiana stomps Northwestern 9-2 at Wrigley Field

Northwestern baseball’s cherished tradition of playing at Wrigley Field filled the dugout and the stands with joy and humility. But it did not deliver a win this year, as Indiana (21-25, 7-15 B1G) used two offensive spurts and stifling pitching to outlast the Wildcats (17-25-1, 5-17 B1G) 9-2 on Friday night.

The fourth annual ‘Cats Classic unfolded under a fading sunset on a brisk 43-degree evening. The chilly weather did not deter fans from making the trip to Wrigleyville. A flurry of spectators dressed in purple sweaters and beanies lined the third-base side, while the Hoosiers countered with supporters of their own bearing red attire along the first-base line.

Ryan Weaver got the start for Northwestern, pitching five innings where he ceded six hits and five runs while striking out six. Sam Hliboki pitched two scoreless innings in relief.

Meanwhile, Indiana’s starter Tony Neubeck pitched a six-inning shutout, walking four ‘Cats while striking out seven.

The Hoosiers’ offense jumped on Weaver early. Indiana’s Hogan Denny knocked a leadoff double in the top of the first before Jake Hanley singled to right field, where Jackson Freeman played the ball cleanly to hold Denny at third.

With runners at the corners and nobody out, a sacrifice fly from Owen ten Oever brought Denny home for the game’s first run. Weaver buckled down afterwards, securing a strikeout and flyout to hold Indiana’s lead at 1-0.

NU’s lone baserunner in the bottom of the first was Ryan Kucherak, who reached on a throwing error by shortstop Cooper Malamazian. Aside from that, the ‘Cats went quietly.

In the top half of the second frame, the leadoff runner again reached base off Weaver and advanced to third on two sacrifice groundouts. Weaver recorded a clutch strikeout to strand Landen Fry at third.

With two outs and nobody on in the second inning, Freeman recorded NU’s first hit of the game and de Groot drew a walk to put Freeman in scoring position. The inning ended with a whimper as Shane Hofstadler grounded out to third.

The third inning was marked by several self-inclifted errors for the Wildcats and Indiana made them pay for each one. Weaver induced a swinging strike three, but a passed ball put Hogan on first, making it three straight innings in which Indiana’s leadoff runner reached base. Two wild pitches then moved Hogan all the way to third.

The Hoosiers immediately took advantage, as Jake Hanley singled to right field to score Hogan and ten Oever followed by mashing a double into the left-center gap and off the green ivy to bring home Hanley and make it 3-0 Indiana.

Indiana’s offense didn’t stop there. Weaver hit a batter to put a second runner on and Landen Fry plated them both on a single to center field. The Northwestern left-hander got two-straight groundouts to strand Fry on base, but the damage was done. The ‘Cats found themselves in an early 5-0 hole after a four-run inning from IU.

Meanwhile, Neubeck continued to shut down Northwestern’s offense, pitching a scoreless inning around a leadoff walk to Owen McElfatrick.

Weaver and the defense turned in their cleanest inning in the fourth. The graduate student opened with a strikeout and though Denny reached on a single, Hofstadler caught him trying to steal second on a ball in the dirt. Weaver then recorded his second strikeout of the inning to keep the score at 5-0.

In the bottom half, NU stretched its reached base streak to four consecutive innings as Jake Yang poked a single to left field. With two outs, de Groot moved Yang into scoring position with a single, but Hofstadler lifted a high foul popout that was caught near the Wildcats’ dugout, leaving them empty handed through four frames.

Weaver tossed a scoreless frame in his final inning of work, capped off by a nice defensive play for the ‘Cats where McElfatrick laid out to snag a sharply hit ball and tossed a one-hopper to first for Nick Barron to scoop out of the dirt for the final out.

NU loaded two runners on base in the bottom of the fifth via a McElfatrick single and a Kucherak walk, but again, the ‘Cats were unable to capitalize, leaving its seventh and eighth runners on base.

Sam Hliboki took the mound for NU in the top of the sixth, plunking the first batter he saw. He appeared to hit the second as well, but after review, the umpires ruled that Moore interfered by bending his knee into the pitch, leading to IU head coach Jeff Mercer’s ejection. Hliboki induced a groundout and flyout to end the inning.

The Wildcats’ batters continued to be silenced in the bottom half of the sixth by Neubeck, eclipsing 100 pitches on a strikeout of Hofstadler. The theme of untimely hitting persisted for NU, as it stranded a runner in scoring position for the fourth time.

The Hoosiers threatened to grow their lead in the seventh, loading the bases with one out. Hliboki held firm, striking out both Fry and Cal Gates to keep the ‘Cats in it.

NU’s offense finally got on the board in the seventh inning, teeing off Neubeck’s replacement in Jacob Vogel. McElfatrick continued his strong night with a second base hit and Kucherak’s double moved him to third. For the first time on Friday night, the Wildcats had a runner on third.

Noah Ruiz plated both McElfatrick and Kucherak on a two-run RBI single to make it a 5-2 game.

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Iowa

Republicans running for governor lay out conservative credentials

Published

18 minutes ago

May 2, 2026

Press Room

Republicans running for governor lay out conservative credentials

The five candidates vying for the Republican Party nomination for governor each went before conservative activists in the Des Moines area Friday night to ask for their support in the upcoming primary election.

The fundraiser for the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, an influential evangelical political group, was the first event of the campaign season where all five candidates were present in person.

More than 1,000 people attended the fundraiser at an event center in Clive where Gov. Kim Reynolds and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, also looked to unify support for Republicans in the upcoming midterms.

Lucius Pham/Iowa Public Radio

Republican Zach Lahn addresses the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition on Friday. Lahn said if he became governor, he would act to revoke the licenses of teachers who push political ideology in their classrooms.

Feenstra and rivals appeal to conservative activists

The candidates took turns answering questions from Republican Party of Iowa Chair Jeff Kaufmann, who prompted them to share their views on key conservative issues: abortion, eminent domain, school choice and religious freedom.

All five candidates oppose abortion rights. Adam Steen, former director of the Iowa Department of Administrative Services, said as governor he would push for restrictions beyond the state’s current law — which bans most abortions at about six weeks of pregnancy.

“We have to be pro-life. We have to be life at conception. It’s fundamental,” Steen said. “And I’ll say this right now — with those abortion pills that are being sent into the state of Iowa right now, we have to stop those first and foremost. Get those out of there and ensure that life is protected at conception.”

The Iowa House passed a bill Friday that includes a measure requiring medial providers to only dispense abortion-inducing drugs directly to the patient in a health care setting. It is not clear whether the bill has enough support to pass in the state Senate.

Also on Friday, a panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling temporarily blocking the mailing of the abortion pill mifepristone, requiring that it be distributed only in person in medical settings. The ruling is expected to be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Rep. Eddie Andrews make his pitches to conservative activists at fundraiser for the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition. Andrews says Iowa should expand its education savings account program and other forms of school choice. — Republican gubernatorial candidate Rep. Eddie Andrews makes his pitches to conservative activists at a fundraiser for the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition. Andrews says Iowa should expand its education savings account program and other forms of school choice.

Businessman Zach Lahn of Belle Plaine said the conservative movement should look beyond abortion. For instance, Lahn said, conservatives should advocate to reverse declines in life expectancy.

“We have to make sure that we are fighting for healthy food, for less medication, for our children, for clean water, for cancer,” said Lahn, who was endorsed by MAHA Action, an advocacy group related to the Make America Healthy Again movement.

Reynolds vetoed a measure that would have put some limits on eminent domain, but the candidates all said they oppose the use of eminent domain for private-sector projects.

Fourth District Rep. Randy Feenstra said he would protect landowners’ property rights.

“The property belongs to the American farmer, the Iowa farmer, belongs to each of us and not anything else,” Feenstra said. “And if somebody wants to run a pipeline, or whatever it might be, then it’s negotiated between the private property owner and the business. And if the private property owner says, ‘no,’ that’s it.”

Former state Rep. Brad Sherman agreed.

“A private company who’s not a common carrier for a product that’s not a public utility should never, ever get to use eminent domain,” Sherman said. “It’s just that simple.”

The GOP candidates for governor are supporters of school choice measures passed in recent years. That includes Iowa’s education savings accounts (ESAs) program, which this year gave around $8,000 in public funding per student to help families pay for tuition at private schools.

Steen called the ESA law “one of the greatest pieces of legislation” passed under Republican control in the Legislature. Current state Rep. Eddie Andrews, R-Johnston, said he would like to see the state expand school choice.

“It didn’t just start with ESAs. I led the push for just regular district-to-district school choice. Then we added public charter school choice,” Andrews said. “I understood that parents need to be in charge of their kids’ education.”

If no candidate wins at least 35% of the primary vote on June 2, the nomination will be decided at a party convention.

Sen. Ted Cruz addresses a crowd of conservative activists in Iowa. — Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, warns conservative activists in Iowa that the state will be a target for Democrats as they try to regain seats in the U.S. House and Senate.

Reynolds says election will affect GOP achievements

Reynolds told activists at the fundraiser she plans to be on the campaign trail supporting the person chosen as the GOP nominee for governor. She said the results of the election in November will have implications for landmark conservative policies put in place under her leadership.

Reynolds listed what she considers some of Republicans’ greatest accomplishments in the Statehouse in her time as governor, including cuts to income tax rates, a broad state government reorganization and one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the United States.

“I would put our record up against anyone,” Reynolds said. “It’s what’s driven more Iowa voters to register as Republicans. In 2018, Republicans held just a 10,800 voter registration advantage. Today, we have an advantage of over 198,000.”

But Republicans should not take their advantage among active registered voters for granted, Reynolds said. Democrats, she said, are united, well-funded and motivated to win back the governor’s office.

“We have the record. We have the numbers,” Reynolds said. “So the only way that we see a Rob Sand win is if we don’t show up. If we show up, we win.”

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