Pastor who was shot, Ruby Ridge survivor, mother of UI murder victim forgive those who inflicted brutal violence

Pastor Tim Remington loves the man who shot him six times nearly a decade ago in his Coeur d’Alene church’s parking lot.

“I love the guy,” Remington said of Kyle Odom, the shooter who’s serving a minimum 10-year prison sentence. “He’s a great young man who needs help.”

Forgiveness and healing were the themes Saturday night at the Altar Church in a talk titled “Journey of Forgiveness.”

Besides Remington, Sara Weaver, a survivor of the deadly 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff, told the crowd she forgave those responsible for shooting and killing her mother and 14-year-old brother during the bloody North Idaho siege.

Cara Northington, mother to Xana Kernodle, also said she forgave Bryan Kohberger, who was sentenced this summer to life in prison for fatally stabbing Kernodle and three other University of Idaho students in 2022.

‘Two horrific days’

Weaver said she’s still angry about the 11-day standoff on her family’s wooded property that claimed the life of her mother, Vicki Weaver, and her younger brother, Samuel Weaver.

“My life and my family were robbed from me horrifically,” said Sara Weaver, who was 16 years old during the 1992 standoff. “ I must remember who the real enemy is, and it’s the enemy of our souls.”

Randy Weaver, Sara Weaver’s father, was wanted by U.S. marshals after he failed to appear in court to face charges for manufacturing and possessing illegal shotguns. Weaver refused to surrender and holed up in the family’s cabin atop Ruby Ridge, near Naples in Boundary County.

The standoff drew more than 400 law enforcement officers before Randy Weaver surrendered. Randy Weaver, who was also shot and injured during the standoff and who had white supremacist ties, died in 2022 at the age of 74.

Photos of the Weaver family were shown on two projectors at the church as Sara Weaver spoke. She published a book, “Ruby Ridge to Freedom: The Sara Weaver Story,” and signed copies for attendees after Saturday night’s event.

On the first day of the standoff, marshals surveilling the Weaver cabin ran into Randy Weaver and Samuel Weaver as well as the elder Weaver’s friend Kevin Harris. A shootout ensued that led to the deaths of U.S. Deputy Marshal William Degan and Samuel Weaver.

Sara Weaver said Saturday her brother was shot twice in the back as he was running toward the family home.

“His last words were, ‘I’m comin,’ Dad,’ ” she said.

She said her younger brother was her best friend growing up. They did everything together, like fishing, hiking and building forts.

She said her brother fixed her broken jewelry, and she stood up for him when other children bullied him.

“My brother was one of the most fiercely loyal friends I had ever had, and we were totally inseparable, or so I thought,” said Sara Weaver, who then described his death.

The day after her brother was shot and killed, an FBI sniper shot Sara Weaver’s mother in the head.

“I was standing next to her on our front porch when she fell at my feet,” Sara Weaver said. “Her last words were screaming for us to get to our house for safety and calling the men she could not see ‘bastards’ for shooting at her family from their comfortable hiding places. The world as I knew it violently ended in two horrific days, and I did not expect to live much beyond that myself.”

Sara Weaver said the loss of her mother and brother started a decade of being “half alive” where she spent each day just trying to survive her sad, angry and extremely bitter emotions.

“I didn’t know how to break through the depression,” she said. “It haunted me day in and day out, and fear of loss took over, dread that at any minute something bad could happen to me or someone I love.”

A cloud always hung over her that stole her smile, Sara Weaver said.

“I had no joy in my heart,” she said.

She said her “darkest depression” took over her life around the time of the birth of her son and trying to build a house. She said she desperately missed her mom to guide her into new motherhood.

Sara Weaver said she struggled with what she now recognizes as postpartum depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, both of which were not talked about much at the time.

In complete desperation, she dusted off her Sunday School Bible which she hadn’t opened in about 20 years and went to the famous verse of John 3:16, the only verse she had memorized two decades earlier. She then read John 3:17. The verse reads, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” That was the day, 22 years ago this year, she met Jesus for the first time, she said.

“I know he came into my heart to change my life because I felt him lift the literal weight of the world off of me,” Sara Weaver said.

She said Jesus wrapped her in a secure blanket with his love. It’s a miracle she’s alive today, she said.

“I felt free for the first time in my life and no longer feared death, that awful thing that had robbed me of my family,” she said.

For years after Ruby Ridge, she said forgiveness was a foreign concept to her. She said she does not believe she could have forgiven those responsible for killing her family without Jesus.

“Death is not the winner in my story,” she said. “Jesus is.”

Sara Weaver encouraged others to forgive their perpetrators and to trust God to help them along the way.

She told attendees they can endure terrible things and still overcome them.

“They don’t have to cripple you forever,” she said.

‘I’m going to die happy’

Twelve shots were fired, but Remington remembers the rapid succession of bullets as “one loud bang” when he was walking out of his church and about to enter his car on March 6, 2016. The force of the bullets “forced” him against the car so hard it left bruises, and he tried to speak through labored breathing from a punctured lung.

He then dropped to the ground and thought, “OK, this is it,” he recalled.

Remington, who served as a state House representative after the shooting, told the crowd Saturday everything turned to slow motion when he was shot, and he thought two things: I want my family to be here, and I hope I make it to heaven.

He said an emergency medical technician repeatedly asked Remington his name and birth date. It became a “game,” and the two started to laugh about it.

“If I’m going to die, I’m going to die happy,” Remington said.

He said the hot bullets that stayed inside him made him feel like he was on fire, and he even asked someone to put out the blaze. Remington said he lost nine units of blood and embarked on a long recovery.

Odom, who thought Remington was an alien, drove away from the Altar, hopped on a plane in Boise and flew to Washington, D.C., where he was arrested two days later by the U.S. Secret Service after he threw thumb drives over the White House gate.

Remington later watched video of Odom before the shooting walking near Remington and his family.

“It could have been bad, really bad, because he was in the church looking for me,” Remington said.

A judge in 2017 sentenced Odom to 10 years in prison with another 15 years to be determined by Idaho prison officials after the former U.S. Marine pleaded guilty to aggravated battery with a firearm.

Remington said he forgave Odom right away for what he did to him, but it was more difficult to forgive him for how his actions affected his family.

Remington was talking to his son on the phone about family lunch plans that day when the gunfire erupted. Police kept his son on the other side of the yellow crime scene tape, not allowing him to see his father.

Meanwhile, Remington said his mother saw people hosing her son’s blood from the ambulance he was inside moments earlier.

“To me, it wasn’t my forgiveness for what he did to me,” Remington said. “I had to forgive him for what he did to all of them.”

Remington acknowledged his family members attending Saturday’s event.

“I have incredible family,” he said. “And when I started to figure out what in the world he did to them, that bothered me. You can do whatever you want to me, but now you’re messing with my family.”

Still, Remington forgave Odom and even visited him in prison, where the two played chess. Remington playfully said he beat Odom in each of the six games of chess they played.

“God loves Kyle Odom just as much as he loves me,” Remington said.

‘I don’t hate Bryan Kohberger’

Northington wiped away tears and hugged Sara Weaver as the Altar played news clips about her daughter’s murder, the 911 call and the aftermath, including Northington’s statement to Kohberger at his July sentencing.

She told Kohberger she forgave him and prayed for him, but she is “washing my hands” of him and not letting him rent space in her head anymore.

“I don’t hate Bryan Kohberger,” she said Saturday.

Northington described her daughter as a “beautiful soul” who “lit up a room.”

“She was funny,” Northington said. “She just had a way of making you feel special.”

She said Kernodle, 20, always played practical jokes, like joining friends at midnight throwing toilet paper on their house.

“She was always doing crazy things like that,” Northington said.

She will most remember when Kernodle was about 4 and she noticed a beautiful sunset.

“Xana said, ‘Mom, look, the clouds are pink,’ and she just took off running,” Northington said.

Northington also described her 30-year journey battling drug addiction, which included going to jail a little over a year after the murders. She said she knew she needed to change.

Turning to Jesus in jail jump-started her turnaround, and she couldn’t stop reading the Bible while incarcerated, she said.

“I was very determined and hungry for the word,” Northington said.

Northington credited the Altar’s Good Samaritan Rehabilitation program, which helps people overcome drug and alcohol addiction, for helping her.

“The Lord just had me surrender it all,” she said of drugs. “And I did, and I haven’t gone back.”