Hesston community gathers to mourn and pray in shooting aftermath

Kelly Slayton takes part in a candlelight vigil at Heritage Park in Hesston, Kan., on Friday. Feb. 26, 2016. On Thursday, Cedric Ford, an employee of Excel Industries in Hesston, allegedly entered the factory and killed three people and wounded over a dozen others. Slayton works at Excel but wasn't in the building at the time of the shooting. (Travis Heying/The Wichita Eagle via AP)

Hesston ? A candlelight vigil Friday night was the beginning of a long healing process not only for Excel Industries employees but also for the entire community of Hesston.

Hundreds assembled at Heritage Park, just a few blocks away from Excel Industries, on Friday night to remember those injured and killed in a mass shooting Thursday.

“Just hug it out, cry, do whatever you’ve got to do,” a vigil organizer said. “Things like this, they burn a hole in you. It’s never going to go away, but you can kind of fill that hole a bit by talking to each other and heal a little bit.”

Many people were still trying to make sense of the shootings, which left four people dead, including the shooter, an Excel employee.

“Never seen it coming from Cedric,” said a second-shift painter at Excel Industries. “For him to take it out on us, his co-workers, we worked hand-in-hand with Cedric every day. It’s mixed feelings, but keep the painters in your thoughts. They were hit the hardest and one of our guys did it. It’s really unreal to think.”

Families and friends hugged each other, spilling tears onto their wax candles.

“Ultimately there’s just love and fear in this world, and I’ve been seeking out where that love is,” said Ryan Bartel, a production manager at the plant. “Yesterday in the middle of the fear there was also a lot of love. What I see here today is a ton of love and so each day, keep putting that love forward. Choose it before fear.”

Bartel was one of the first Excel employees Cedric Ford fired at on Thursday.

He had just left the building to go home when Ford pulled up, yelled at him and fired. Bartel said he took cover behind a car as Ford entered the plant.

He said Thursday’s shootings made him re-assess his life.

“Every time that gun fired, I thought I was going to feel something, getting hit,” Bartel said. “To think that yesterday could have been it has made today, even though it’s hard … I met today with a different embrace than I ever had before, so in that sense it’s good and terrible.

Dennis Britton Sr. stood on a picnic table to update the crowd on his son, who was shot in the leg on Thursday.

As a 20-year veteran who served two tours in Iraq, he said it is imperative for people to take advantage of resources like counseling.

“Especially for those that have never seen shooting, they need to take advantage of that support,” Britton said. “I’m really, really shocked at the amount of support the town has.”

That support was evident in Wichita when two Excel employees went to visit friends in the hospital, they said.

“I had a Hustler jacket on, (he) had a Hustler jacket on, and everywhere we went, people knew who we were,” the man said. “Everywhere we went, people told us they were behind us. … People that didn’t know us from Adam.”

Melissa Boyer, who was close friends with Renee Benjamin, one of the victims of the Hesston shooting, said “it’s going to be hard walking back into work.” Her most recent memories of Excel are running through its parking lot, dodging bullets, before tying a tourniquet around the leg of an injured co-worker.

“It’s going to be hard walking back into that building,” Boyer said.

As the vigil was ending, attendees began singing “Amazing Grace.”

They slowly lifted their candles into the cold February air.

One lifted up a teddy bear.

The vigil ended in a prayer.

“We sure have a lot of questions why something like this would happen,” a man said. “We need to turn our heads to you, Lord, and seek you out in this.

“It’s going to a long, difficult time with you in this, but we’ll make it through.”

Shooting victims described as outgoing, generous

The shooting spree in central Kansas left three people dead, 14 injured and a community grieving. All three people who died worked at the Excel Industries factory and were there when co-worker Cedric L. Ford opened fire Thursday afternoon.

Here are the stories of their lives, as told by family and friends:

BRIAN SADOWSKY, 44

The Newton man was remembered by co-workers at a candlelight vigil Friday as a very outgoing guy who was always telling jokes and was fun to be around.

“He will be missed,” said Rick Lett, a friend since high school.

Sadowsky was a rabid Pittsburgh Steelers fan, Lett said. He wore the team’s gear to work every game day, would bet on the games with co-workers and make those who lost the bets wear Steelers-stamped clothing for a week.

He also enjoyed listening to heavy metal music and talking about it with co-workers who shared his love for it.

Lett worked an earlier shift on Thursday, and recalled his friend’s last words to him as Sadowsky came in for that fateful second shift: “Have a good evening, brother.”

“At Excel, we are like a family,” Lett said.

RENEE BENJAMIN, 30

Benjamin would give you the shirt off her back if you needed it, friends and family said Friday.

Dominique Woods tearfully honored her partner of three years — and the others whose loved ones’ lives were shattered by the violence — with the release of helium balloons at a candlelight vigil Friday night near the factory.

Woods struggled to put her loss into words: “I am trying to explain my pain to people.”

Benjamin was a good artist, and “good with her words,” she said.

“She was a really good person, she loved everybody,” Woods said.

A co-worker, Ryan Bartel, recalled that Benjamin “always had a ready smile.”

JOSH HIGBEE, 31

A welder at Excel Industries, the Buhler man as an engaged car lover, avid fisherman and a devoted father, his family says.

His sister-in-law, LaShonda Hinson, told the Wichita Eagle that Higbee “was taught to be a very loving, kind man,” and adored his 4-year-old son.

His brother, Nathaniel Hinson, said Higbee was always known as a “Mr. Fix-It.”

The newspaper reports that Higbee was adopted into the Hinson family at age 2.

— The Associated Press