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Why Davey Blackburn opted to forgive Amanda Blackburn's killers

Six months after Amanda Blackburn was killed, her husband spoke about forgiveness and raising their son

Madeline Buckley
madeline.buckley@indystar.com
Davey Blackburn (left), who served as a youth pastor with NewSpring Church before forming a church in Indianapolis, returned to Anderson to speak with NewSpring Senior Perry Noble about how he has coped since his wife, Amanda Blackburn, was slain six months ago.

When Davey Blackburn came home to find his wife lying on the floor, gravely injured, his first thought was that something went horrifically wrong with her pregnancy.

“When I found her still breathing, I thought, ‘This is bad, but if we can get her to the hospital, she is going to be okay,’” Blackburn told a church congregation in South Carolina on Sunday morning.

Blackburn didn’t know someone had been in his Indianapolis home.

He didn’t know in that moment that his wife, Amanda Blackburn, suffered from gunshot wounds. She died in the hospital 24 hours later.

Nearly six months have passed since the 28-year-old woman was found by her husband critically injured in their home in the city’s Wynnedale-Spring Hill neighborhood on Nov. 10.

The street in the 2800 block of Sunnyfield Court is now quiet. The Blackburn’s home has a for-sale sign in its front yard. The only indication of the horrific violence that took place there are posters in some windows that proclaim, “Thank you IMPD!”

About two weeks after Amanda Blackburn’s death, detectives arrested three suspects in connection with her shooting death. The men, Larry Taylor, Jalen Watson and Diano Gordon face charges of murder, robbery and a slew of other felonies. Their cases remain pending.

Court documents allege that Taylor shot Amanda Blackburn after breaking into her home amid a spree of burglaries and violence with his two co-defendants.

The woman was three months pregnant. Her toddler son Weston was in his crib when his mother was shot.

Amanda Blackburn's death: What we know

Davey Blackburn spoke publicly Sunday during a service at New Spring Church in Anderson, S.C., for the first time since November, when he gave a number of interviews to national television programs.

More than 2,000 people attended the 9 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. services at New Spring Church's main campus in Anderson. Blackburn also spoke at two services Sunday afternoon, all of which were broadcast to the church's 16 campuses around South Carolina, as well as Resonate Church, Davey Blackburn's church in Indianapolis.

At the Anderson church, the conversation between Senior Pastor Perry Noble and Blackburn was shown on three giant screens inside the cavernous 2,400-seat auditorium.

Those that attended the services spoke of the emotional resonance of Davey Blackburn's story.

“There was no dry eye in the room today," said Darien Rencher, a high school senior in Anderson, S.C. “When I see pain, I want to react like Davey reacted.”

Davey Blackburn declined an interview with IndyStar.

“It was a very normal day, at the beginning of it,” Davey Blackburn said of the morning he left the house to go to the gym. “You never think that this can be a life-altering day.”

For 24 hours, Davey Blackburn said he prayed for his wife. Friends and family surrounded her bedside. The next day, the doctor told him Amanda Blackburn had no brain function, he said.

The couple had met on a blind date neither of them felt would go well. Davey Blackburn was a pastor at New Spring Church in South Carolina before the pair moved to Indianapolis in 2012 with the goal of founding a church. It grew from a bible study composed of four people in their living room, he said, to Resonate Church on the city’s north side.

Recently, Davey Blackburn returned to the home where his wife was killed, he wrote in a blog post. He wrote that he reluctantly walked back into the room where he found her.

“The morning I returned, I put worship music in my earbuds, laid down in the spot I found her, wept, prayed and worshipped,” he wrote.

Davey Blackburn and his son Weston now live with friends, he wrote in his blog. A question he gets all the time: How is Weston doing?

“How is Weston going to grow up without his mom? Every time this thought came to my mind it was a like a dagger was being driven deeper into my stomach,” Davey Blackburn wrote.

But he wrote that his son is doing okay. He attributes that to a network of support from family and friends, and Weston’s age. At 15 months when his mother died, Davey Blackburn wrote Weston was not old enough to absorb the tragedy.

Noble, the pastor of New Spring Church, asked Davey Blackburn on Sunday: “Have you forgiven the men that killed Amanda?”

“At the very beginning, when they had not been arrested, it was probably a little bit easier because they were faceless people. I had no idea who these guys were,” Davey Blackburn said. “The first time I felt any kind of anger was when they arrested them, and I saw photos.”

He said he wrestled with the idea, eventually concluding that forgiveness is not an emotion.

“I wasn’t ever going to feel like forgiving them,” he said.

Still, he said he decided to do it.

“Because bitterness and unforgiveness is going to be a cancer for no one else besides me,” he said.

Reporter Kirk Brown with the Anderson Independent Mail contributed to this story. Call Star reporter Madeline Buckley at (317) 444-6083. Follow her on Twitter:@Mabuckley88.