Church intruder shot in back, report says

BIG LAKE -- Although an attorney for Phillip Mielke said the Big Lake pastor fired in self-defense, a death certificate shows that Christopher L. Palmer was shot in the back the morning he and Francis M. Jones reportedly broke into the Big Lake Chapel.

Both men died of wounds after being shot by Mielke on April 24. Palmer's former girlfriend, now living in California, faxed a copy of the April 30 death certificate to the Frontiersman after learning of the self-defense claim.

The certificate, signed by acting chief medical examiner Dr. Frank Fallico, listed the cause of Palmer's death as "Penetrating Gunshot Wound of Back."

"I am very upset," said Renee Boroello of Rohnert Park, Calif.

She and Palmer conceived a child but split up before the boy was born, with Palmer returning to California.

"Now I have an 8-year-old son who doesn't know why he'll never see his father again," Boroella said during a telephone interview.

Boroella theorized that Palmer and Jones were in the chapel to steal food, possibly for the children of Palmer's girlfriend, who lived with them in Big Lake. Jones also lived with the couple and children.

Boroella said Palmer had some injuries that made it difficult for him to work. One was a leg injury from a motorcycle accident, and he lost partial vision in one eye when a staple gun bounced back and hit him, she said.

The woman said she had to speak out after hearing attorney Jerry Wade's account of the incident, released to news media last week.

In that prepared statement, Wade said Mielke went to the chapel after being awakened by an alarm in his nearby home. Wade said his client concluded that intruders were in the chapel's basement meeting room.

"In the darkness, Pastor Mielke heard the intruders rush toward him on the stairway. He called out an order, something like 'stop, halt, freeze.'

Simultaneously he backed away, and, in the darkness it appeared to him that, as the intruders reached the top of the stairs, they moved toward him. At that moment he fired because he felt threatened and thought that he had no safe alternative," Wade said in the release.

Officials have not said whether the two men were armed. District Attorney Roman Kalytiak of Palmer said he expects to decide this week whether to convene a grand jury to consider criminal charges against Mielke.

Boroella believes the shootings were unjustified.

"He didn't make the greatest decisions," she said of Palmer. "He had a troubled life. He wasn't perfect but he wasn't meant to be gunned down like an animal."