Apparently deeply troubled, Mr. Trey Pennington, a member of 2nd PCA (Calvary) took his own life in the church parking lot on Sunday, September 4.

Editor’s Note: At the request of church officials, this story was removed early Tuesday morning and is now reposted with several changes in facts that were not available at the first writing.

During the 11:00AM service, Mr. Pennington entered the church, walked up the aisle, turned around and walked back to leave the church. Several Deacons who were ushering, knowing of Mr. Pennington’s troubles and noticing his behavior, closed the doors to the sanctuary

Pennington walked to his car, opened the trunk, and took out a shotgun. Another Deacon who was in the parking lot nearby immediately called 911. The church is located in downtown Greenville, and within a brief minute or two the first police car arrived. Very quickly there were a dozen or more officers on the scene.

As the police approached him, he fired one shot into a large oak tree in the area. He then walked aimlessly around the lot and talked briefly the Deacon in the parking lot. He then turned the gun on himself and fired a shot into his chest. He was confirmed to be dead later in the afternoon.

As this was going on, word was sent to the presiding minister in the sanctuary and he encouraged people to move to another part of the building. Pennington’s wife and 3 of his six children were present in the service and went with a pastoral associate to a private room. After a brief period, people returned to the sanctuary and, rather than continuing the service with the scheduled sermon, spent time in prayer and singing of hymns of comfort.

About an hour later, the congregation was dismissed from the scene – although about 10-12 parked cars were within the crime scene area which was surrounded by the now familiar to TV viewers yellow tape and those drivers could not pick up their cars until much later in the day.

A memorial service was held at the church on Tuesday morning. You may view the service by visiting the church website here.

A private family internment service will take place in Pensacola on Wednesday.

The back story to this horrible tragedy is Mr. Pennington’s role in the field of social networking. He was well known, not just nationally but internationally. As this story went viral on Sunday, it was picked up on dozens if not hundreds of web sites as well as mainline media as far away as London.

Additional background information comes from the FB page of Jay Handler, another well-known authority and speaker in the field of Social Networking, who was a friend and colleague of Trey Pennington. This posting gives some background of what led up to Sunday’s incident:

This is the second, and final scare we would all have with Trey, a man known on multiple continents by people who considered him a friend, a mentor, an advisor, a pal.

A couple of months ago, Trey attempted (more accurately, threatened) suicide and was stopped in time, after announcing to us all on Facebook that he was hurting and going through a terrible divorce. Being church-goers and with 6 children, though people around them in person may have known something was amiss, I was surprised to hear he was struggling and in fact divorcing.

His many, many social media and personal friends came to his aid – or tried to – and offered support, phone numbers, a friendly ear, a sounding board… whatever he needed to get through a rough time nearly anyone can empathize with. Olivier Blanchard wrote him a blog post, called Being Human as a reminder we all “get it” – we know what it’s like to have ups and downs and tragedies and deal with them well or even badly for a spell.

And after a few weeks of being in some sort of care which I have no details about, Trey resurfaced, and quickly became his jovial persona again, with perhaps a touch more melancholy and introspection than usual. But that was not surprising given what he is dealing with in his family. Everyone understood. Everyone he knew as far as the limited landscape I could see, supported him.

But there was an undercurrent, certainly, in hindsight… things he said online, the fact that he repeatedly took pictures of the bridge where I thought he had intended to jump – every time I saw one on Facebook I cringed. I just didn’t like it, and didn’t know exactly why. I guess because the reminder of suicide is not pleasant when you hope and pray someone has gotten away from that desire to end their life permanently. (I have edited this post mildly as I found out he did NOT jump from the bridge but had attempted suicide another way, back in June. It was initially believed the bridge was involved but that was not the case.)

But it was not enough, and so today he took his life – apparently outside of the church either before or after the service, which I assumed may have contained some of his family members also but don’t know.

This story will most certainly become the focus of future discussions of how well people really know each other through social networking, or not – and what or what not they can do to help their Facebook Friends.