Two months after his grandson killed five members of their family, Allen Kendrick, an Alabama-based pastor, has stepped down from his position. The 72-year-old preacher has been on leave since the slayings. Kendrick described his grandson as troubled but said there was no indication leading up to the murder. Unfortunately, the pastor has been swamped with negative comments and death threats after the traumatic event.
“I watched him all these years try so hard, talk to every agency, talk to everybody. We tried everything, had him instituted in hospitals only to be discharged with no medication, no follow-up, no doctor, nothing,” Kendrick said about his grandson. Brandon Allan Kendrick, the grandson, has been charged with murder in the slaying of his wife, two children, and cousins.
“Kelse [ the wife] and her children have been victims of domestic violence for years,” said one source who indicated Bardon was not taking his medication. The pastor adopted Brandon at age 12. “All he’d ever known for 12 years was abuse: physical, sexual, mental, drugs. When I got him at 12 years old, he weighed 58 pounds,” the pastor explained.
“[He] was on nine different psychotic medicines. At 18, the system failed him, took him off disability, took him off medication because we couldn’t afford to buy. … They canceled his Medicaid,” the pastor added. Before the deadly attack, the atmosphere was cordial. “Ten minutes before I heard a gunshot, my grandson was sitting in my bedroom with me and Gay laughing, talking. [We] talked about the first time we ever took him to a restaurant for his 13th birthday. He had never been in a restaurant. We took him there for his birthday,” the elder Kendrick explained.
He recalled how he was “In the bedroom with me and Gay, we’re talking about the J. Alexander dinner we took him to, few other things with laughing and talking. His wife had gotten home. She came in, laughed with us a little while, left. He got up 10 minutes later. Pow!” “I told Gay, I said that’s a gunshot. She said, ‘Yeah, it was.’ She was sitting on a little sofa here,” he added.
“She got up. I didn’t have my shoes on, so I’m putting my shoes on. He [Brandon] walks in our bedroom with a gun in his hand. She was closest to him. She grabbed the gun. It went off. I don’t know how it kept from hitting her,” Pastor Kendrick stated to his congreagation. “Yeah, I do,” he went on to say, “Because our prayer team, that night, about an hour before this incident, our prayer team stood right here and joined hands and prayed for mine and Gay’s safety because I had reached out to them.
“I’d reached out to several of the church members. There were several assisting me and helping me trying to get some kind of help,” he added. “So they prayed for us.” Kendrick says his grandson”didn’t know where he was at.” He explained the conversation between the pair. “He started asking me and Gay. He said, ‘Nana, where am I at? Where’s Kelse? Poppy, why are you, why are you angry? What I do wrong?’ Ten minutes before that, he’s laughing, talking and having a pretty good time.”
To conclude, he said “Don’t you think that if you don’t have Jesus, that you going to walk out of here and everything’s going to be cool because you ain’t no match for the devil.” “‘Well, I’m not mentally ill.’ Maybe not, but do you think you’re strong enough to resist the devil if he were to possess you?” he asked. “Better get your heart right with God because you may be the next one on national news,” he described.