Faith communities gathered at St. Paul AME Church in Carrboro Friday to mourn Wednesday’s shooting deaths of nine members of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

The bell at St. Paul AME chimed nine times as church member Janie Alston lit nine tapers before rows of crowded pews—one candle for each person killed in Wednesday’s shooting at Emanuel AME. Carlotta Armstrong-Young read the names and ages of those lost.

The crowd filled every seat in the worship hall and even spilled over to an adjacent room where they watched the service from a television screen. People of many faiths and backgrounds came to show support and seek healing after Wednesday’s horrific events.

Diane Robertson is not a member of St. Paul AME, but she came to the vigil just the same, she said, “to honor our martyrs, our newest martyrs in this fight for freedom. And I wonder how it could happen that it would be Juneteenth that we would be sitting here to do that, but God has plans that I don’t understand.”

St. Paul AME member Wanda Weaver said she was stunned when she heard the news about Emanuel; but she wasn’t surprised.

“Unfortunately, it’s sad to say, no,” Weaver said. “It’s very sad to say at this day and time that I’m not surprised.”

Seated in a pew near the back of the church, Frank Alston, who attends First Baptist in Chapel Hill, says he’s had enough of gun violence.

“The kids that got killed, and the people that got killed in the movies, and then this happened, and then two police got killed in New York. It’s just a tragedy. There’s got to be something done about guns in the United States of America,”  he said.

UNC Chancellor Carol Folt attended the vigil as well.

“I wouldn’t be any place but here today,” Folt said. “I think it’s a wonderful opportunity to be with people to find solace in that community. But it was very inspiring […] to listen to the words people were saying, I found just really helped me.”

Faith leaders from six churches and one synagogue took turns leading the crowd in prayer and worship. Their remarks were occasionally sorrowful, but the reigning tone from St. Paul AME’s reverend Thomas Nixon was defiant.

“Today we are coming rejoicing, yes, angry, yes, mad as hell, yes. But at the same time we come giving God praise, knowing that God has not brought us this far to leave us now. We too will rise again!” Nixon preached.

Nixon says he knows the shooter took advantage of Emanuel’s openness to visitors, but that despite the risk, St. Paul AME will not be locking its doors.