Jamie Schmidt (courtesy of the family's GoFundMe page)A 53-year-old mother of three, who flatly refused to be sexually assaulted by an armed assailant in a Catholic Supply store near St. Louis, Missouri, is being mourned by those who knew her and celebrated for the heroism she showed in the face of death.
Writing for LifeSiteNews.com, Father Brian W. Harrison, O.S., suggests that Jamie Schmidt, a quiet and unassuming member of St. Anthony of Padua parish at High Ridge in Missouri, is being hailed as a martyr for her stoic refusal to submit to a sexual assault – a decision that ultimately cost her life.
As Father Harrison recounts, Jamie had gone into the Catholic Supply store on November 19 to buy supplies to crochet rosaries for Christmas gifts. Besides two women clerks, she was the only other person in the store when a stocky, middle-aged man came in. After exchanging a few words, he went out to his car to get a credit card but came back with a revolver instead. He immediately forced the three terrified women into a secluded corner of the store and ordered them to strip. Once they had done so, he began to sexually molest them.
However, when he came to Jamie, things didn’t go as he planned. When he ordered her to cooperate with his sadistic demands, she refused.
“. . . Mrs. Schmidt — naked, defenseless, and with the barrel of a loaded gun pointed at her head — Just Said No,” Father writes. “With death staring her in the face, Jamie quietly refused to allow her purity, her personal dignity, and her marriage covenant to be outraged. And her point-blank refusal to bow to her assailant’s demands was met instantly with a point-blank shot that felled her on the spot.”
Even while she lay dying on the floor, the man went back to abusing the other two women until he finally fled the store.
By the time they were able to call for help and get Jamie to a hospital, it was too late. She was pronounced dead later that evening.
The two survivors were able to give police a detailed description of their assailant which enabled them to find and arrest 53-year-old Thomas Bruce of the crime just two days later. Bruce is being held without bail on 17 charges including first-degree murder, multiple counts of sodomy, armed criminal action, kidnapping, burglary, and tampering with evidence.
Parishioners who knew Jamie and her husband, Gregg, and their three children, were horrified by the news that this active member of the parish, who was a talented musician and artist, was dead.
“She was very simple, very modest, very quiet,” parishioner Laura Sheldon told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “If you ever needed help, she would be there. That’s just the way Jamie was.”
Gerry Gutting, who was at Mass yesterday at St. Anthony’s, told KSDK.com that when he found out that Jamie had been killed, it shook his entire world.
"I got a text telling me that it was Jamie and then I just cried, and I told my wife and we just cried. We couldn't even sleep," Gutting said. "This is something that we're going to be thinking about the rest of our lives. Just pray for all the victims. The best thing anybody can do is just pray for them and pray this never happens again."
Her funeral will be on Tuesday, November 27.
“This tale of indomitable resistance to demonic evil calls for deep reflection," Father Harrison writes. "Jamie Schmidt’s act of supreme courage and nobility, called forth immediately in a moment of sudden crisis, clearly did not come from nowhere. The action of grace had been evidently working quietly but deeply in the soul of this lady who had outward lived devoutly but unobtrusively, like any number of other good Catholics.”
He adds: “May it please God that, before long, we may be able to invoke the intercession of Saint Jamie Schmidt — to help Make America Pure Again!”
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help the family with her funeral expenses.
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