Armed Man Tries to Drag Woman From Church Parking Lot at Gunpoint
A 74-year-old woman was ambushed by an armed ex under a restraining order as she walked into Sunday service. Armed bystanders stopped the abduction.
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I’m sorry, but there is not video to go with this breakdown. I’ll still be on vacation until mid next week. This one has some important concepts you need to be training on as a team when I break down what you can do to prevent and respond to this type of incident.
What Happened
On Sunday, May 31, a 74-year-old woman parked at First United Methodist Church in Port St. Lucie, Florida, and walked toward the building for service. Jose Tsu Zamora, 64, of North Miami, was waiting for her. The two had been in a long relationship. They lived together in Hollywood and later in Fort Pierce, and it had turned violent. She put him out of her home in March and obtained a domestic violence injunction against him. He was already wanted on a warrant for violating that order before he showed up that morning.
Zamora approached her and said he wanted to talk in his car. She refused and kept walking. He grabbed her, put a gun to her body, and began dragging her toward his vehicle, a dark two-door hatchback. Police say he told her, “If I can’t have you, no one can.” This was not a robbery and it was not random. He came to take her, and his own words tell you what he intended if he could not.
She refused to be moved. She dropped to the ground and made herself dead weight, which slowed him and kept her in the open. People in the lot saw what was happening and moved toward her. Two of them told police they were armed and ordered Zamora to release her. He displayed his gun, then let her go and fled. She was not seriously injured.
Officers arrested him that evening in Hialeah with help from the U.S. Marshals. Zamora is a convicted felon and is prohibited from possessing a firearm. His record includes prior attempted kidnapping and witness retaliation arrests in Miami-Dade. His family later turned over a pellet gun that investigators are still working to confirm as the weapon. He faces five felony charges and is held on a $745,000 bond.
The people who stopped this were bystanders, not a posted security team. The woman is alive because she fought and because strangers acted.
The Parking Lot Is Where He Chose to Attack
Zamora did not target the church. He targeted her, and the church was the place he could count on finding her at a fixed time every week. Same building, same Sunday service, same arrival window. Predictability is what a determined attacker looks for, and a regular churchgoer hands it to him without thinking about it.
Most security teams build their coverage around the sanctuary and the entrances. The parking lot gets a friendly wave. This attack happened in the lot, before the victim reached the door, and that is the more common pattern than teams want to admit. The lot is where your people are most exposed and least watched. They are at their cars, distracted, often alone, and not yet inside the area your team is focused on. An attacker who has studied his target knows he does not need to get inside the building. He needs a few unobserved seconds in open ground. Coverage during the arrival and departure windows is where you close that gap.
Know Who Has a Restraining Order
This is the part I want every team leader to act on this week. You need to know who in your congregation has a restraining order against someone. That is not gossip and it is not prying. It is information your team needs to do its job. A member going through a violent separation is a risk to the whole congregation when her abuser comes looking for her, not only to herself.
Build a quiet channel for that information to reach the team. When a member tells a pastor or a leader that she has an injunction against an ex, the people working security need to know, and they need it in a usable form. A name. A photograph if one exists. A vehicle and a tag. A physical description. You cannot watch for a threat no one has told you about.
Then you use it. When you know a member is under threat, you do not let her cross that lot alone. Walk her from her car to the building, and walk her back to her car when service ends. An escort requires no confrontation and no drama. It puts a trained person at her side during the exact window this attacker used. Had a team member been walking with this woman, Zamora would have faced a very different problem than a 74-year-old alone in a parking lot. Most of what a good team does is quiet and unglamorous, and that is what stops an ambush like this one.
Train the Hostage Shot
Armed men stopped this. The harder question is what happens when it does not end with the attacker fleeing, when it comes down to gunfire with a hostage in front of you.
I will tell you plainly what I would do here. I was not there, and I am working from what police have reported. But a man dragging a woman to a car with a gun against her body is about to move her to a second location, and a victim taken to a second location is almost always killed. Her life was in danger in that moment, not at some later point. If I have the shot, I take it. That is not a standoff where time works in your favor. It is a killing in progress, and the shot stops it.
That is why we train the hostage shot. A man holding a woman at gunpoint and using her body as he drags her is a hostage situation whether anyone calls it that or not. Most people have never put a round on a target with a hostage in the frame. They do not know whether they can make that shot, so when they are looking at the real thing they freeze. You learn what you are capable of on the range and in reality-based training at the church, not in the parking lot. I begin my cold shot at the range on a hostage target. First round of the day, no warm-up, because in a real encounter there is no warm-up. You train it routinely or you do not own it.
If you are the range master or the lead trainer for your team, this is your responsibility. Put your people through hostage-shot scenarios. Work it cold on the range and run force-on-force at the church so they have faced a version of it before the day it walks up on them. I know I can make that shot because I train for it. Your people need to reach that same certainty before they are standing in that lot.
Biblical Perspective
Job is defending his life before God, recalling the days when he walked in integrity, and he describes the man he had been:
“Because I delivered the poor who cried for help, and the fatherless who had none to help him. The blessing of him who was about to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban. I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. I was a father to the needy, and I searched out the cause of him whom I did not know. I broke the fangs of the unrighteous and made him drop his prey from his teeth.”
— Job 29:12–17, ESV
The line that fits this incident is the last one. Job broke the fangs of the unrighteous and made him drop his prey from his teeth. That is not a description of charity. It is a man stepping in against a predator and forcing him to release the one he had seized. Job counted that among the marks of a righteous life, alongside caring for the poor and the widow. The two men in that parking lot did the same thing. A predator had a 74-year-old woman in his teeth, and they made him drop her.
The command behind it is older and plainer:
“You shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor: I am the Lord.”
— Leviticus 19:16, ESV
Older translations render the close of that verse as a charge not to stand idly by the blood of your neighbor. To do nothing while a neighbor is harmed is named as sin. We tell ourselves that staying out of trouble is the careful and humble choice. Scripture does not allow that. When you have the means to break a predator’s grip and you choose your own comfort instead, you have stood by the blood of your neighbor. Job did not wait to be asked. He searched out the cause of a man he did not even know. That is the disposition a church security team carries onto the lot every Sunday, men and women alike. Not eagerness for a fight, but a settled refusal to watch the weak be carried off.
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Final Assessment
A convicted felon under a restraining order drove to the one place he knew she would be, put a gun to a 74-year-old woman, and tried to force her into his car in front of witnesses. She lived because she fought to stay where she was and because armed bystanders refused to stand aside. What stopped this was the victim’s own resistance and the courage of strangers, not a security plan. That held this day. It will not always hold.
The work is straightforward. Know who in your congregation is under a restraining order and watch for that specific man. Escort members under threat from their cars and back to them, because the lot is where they are most exposed. Train for the gunfight you hope never comes, including the hostage shot, so that when a man has a gun on a victim and is dragging her to a car, you have already settled what you will do and you are capable of doing it. The person who has never trained it will freeze.
This woman walked into church on a Sunday and walked into an ambush. The job of a church security team is to be the reason that ends the way this one did, and to make it the plan instead of the exception.
If this changed how you look at your own parking lot, leave a comment and tell me what your team does to cover arrivals and departures. Share it with your pastor and your team leader. The next one will not announce itself.
Copyright © 2026 Keith Graves. All rights reserved.
At our church, we have 2 Watchmen patrolling the parking lots in a golf cart with a radio. In addition, we have a uniformed Sheriff's deputy patrolling the parking lots and the church perimeter. The deputy uses one of our radios to communicate with the Watchmen in the golf cart and the Watchmen located inside the church.
Another reason to have a team member at the parking lot is to ensure those with canes, walkers wheelchairs, limited vision and limited hearing can cross the lot safely between the sanctuary and their cars. We help folks like that every week.