A Springfield church congregation is still mourning after Pam Fultz died earlier this week, just over two weeks after she was seriously hurt in an Aug. 6 hit-and-run that claimed her husband Randy’s life.
“It’s a double slug in the gut. I mean, that doesn’t even cover it,” said Deanna Trujillo, associate pastor at City of Destiny Church. “But it’s the only hope we had, was that Pam might survive.”
Randy and Pam Fultz, both 73, were taking a walk near their home on Aug. 6 when a white SUV struck them shortly before 9 p.m. on Sixth Street near the G Street intersection, according to police.
The SUV reportedly kept going northbound, struck another vehicle, made a U-turn, and then hit the couple again after doubling back.
Edgar Solorio Lopez, the suspect in the hit-and-run, is being held at Lane County Jail on a murder charge connected to a fatal stabbing on Aug. 7, the day after the collision. Springfield police have described the stabbing as a random attack.
“This is the kind of thing that you ask, ‘Why them?’ And we don’t know why,” Trujillo said. “I don’t know if we’ll ever know why.”
The Fultzes became members of the church, an Assemblies of God congregation, about 18 months ago, though they had been involved in various Springfield churches for much longer, Trujillo said. She had known them for decades.
“They were the same inside the church, outside the church. You talk to their kids, they were the same inside their house, and that’s beautiful. That’s a beautiful legacy to leave behind,” Trujillo said.
The couple, who had been married for nearly 20 years, took walks through their neighborhood “almost every night,” she said.
Trujillo and her husband Dan, senior pastor at the church, lived in the same area for years. Both couples took part in what Trujillo described as “prayer walks.”
Back when she lived in the neighborhood, Trujillo recalled frequent drug-related activity at many of the houses. During her walks, she would pray for “God to change and to renew and clean it up.”
The neighborhood has since turned around, she said. Even so, she added, the Fultzes kept prayer as part of their walking routine.
“I knew that they had been prayer-walking because they mentioned that to us,” Trujillo said. “But they had never told us if they specifically were targeting any area or anything like that. I think they just loved their neighborhood. I think they chatted with people as they went by and greeted people.”
Randy Fultz played guitar and sang during church services, she said. He would often drop by the building, which also operates food and clothing donation services, to pitch in with whatever was needed. He had been getting ready to help paint a mural.
Trujillo said she believes Pam helped Randy come up with songs. At the church, “she’d help with the hospitality, the coffee area, or set up and take down different things that we were doing.”
Trujillo’s son attended Springfield High School at the same time as Lopez, the suspect, she said, but the two didn’t know each other given the size of the school. She said she was unaware of any connection between Lopez and the Fultzes.
The couple’s lives “were stolen,” she said, “not just from this church and the other churches that they still loved and served when they had a chance to. But they were stolen from this entire community.”
Leave a Comment